Trying out the cloud load testing service using Visual Studio Enterprise trial

Of late, we have heard that several people are interested in trying out the capabilities of Visual Studio load test offering, but they are not sure how to go about it if they don’t already have an Enterprise license.

This post is to illustrate how easy it is to use Visual Studio Enterprise trial to learn about load test capabilities in the VS IDE, and how you can leverage the free 20,000 VUM monthly quota of your VSTS account to see the cloud-based load testing in action.

Of course, downloading Enterprise Trial is one way to start. But if you don’t want to go through the process of downloading and setting it up, you can quickly spin up a virtual machine in Azure with the latest version of Visual Studio Enterprise pre-installed.

Here are the steps to try out cloud load testing using a Visual Studio VM in Azure:

Before you start

1. Sign-up for an Azure subscription, if you don’t have one already. Don’t have one? Start a free trial and utilize the free Azure credits.
2. Sign-up for a Visual Studio Team Services account if you don’t have one already, for free.

Getting Visual Studio

1. Sign into your Azure account using the new portal
2. Create a new VM using one of the “Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 on Windows Server 2012 R2″ templates.
   • Select +New -> Virtual machines
   • In the virtual machines blade, click +Add
   • Search for the Visual Studio Enterprise 2015 template
3. Provide the necessary details such as VM name, username, password, etc. and, click create and your VM will be ready in just a few minutes.

Getting Visual Studio ready for first use

1. Login to the VM created in the previous steps and launch Visual Studio.
2. Start Visual Studio
3. When prompted, sign in using your Microsoft account (MSA) to activate your trial.

Getting started with cloud load test

1. Create a VSTS account if you don’t already have one. Every month, you get 20,000 free VUMs, using which you can run load tests in the cloud. This is a great option to leverage to learn about cloud load testing.
2. Download the sample load test project and complete the walkthrough

 Have questions? Reach out to us at vsoloadtest@microsoft.com

FAQ

• My account is setup with basic access in VSTS. Can I still run Visual Studio load tests using trial?

>> Yes, even if your account is setup with basic access in VSTS, you can still run load tests when using Visual Studio Enterprise trial.

• Want to learn beyond the basics?

>> Our knowledge base has a ton of useful links to articles and videos on load testing.

• My organization also has teams that don’t use Visual Studio or they use other technologies such as Java for development. Are there any other options for load testing?

>> Yes, you can also run Apache JMeter based tests using cloud load testing in VSTS. You can find the details here.

• I like what I saw, what are my options for getting an Enterprise license?

>> Apart from the standard MSDN subscription, you can also get a monthly or annual cloud subscription. See this page for more details.