About LoadRunner Professional licenses

To run Vusers with LoadRunner Controller there must be a valid LoadRunner Professional license installed on the Controller machine. LoadRunner Professional automatically installs the Community license during LoadRunner Professional setup.

License bundles

There are several types of LoadRunner Professional license bundles available.

The Community license is free of charge, and is installed with your LoadRunner Professional installation. It enables the following protocol usage:

  • Community: 50 Vusers for all protocols, including Gatling and JMeter, with the exception of the COM/DCOM, Templates, and GUI (UFT) bundles.
  • Mobile UI: Unlimited Vusers

Other bundles allow you to run additional Vusers on selected protocols. For more information on available bundles, see the License Bundles flier.

Note: When using Noise scenarios, for each valid license you can run 10 noise generator-type Vusers.

To obtain and install additional licenses, see Install LoadRunner Professional licenses.

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License types

The following types of licenses are available:

Type Description
Permanent

This license does not expire - there is no time limit to the license validity.
Evaluation This license enables potential customers to evaluate LoadRunner Professional functionality.
Time Limited

This license is valid for a limited period only.
VUFDs

A VUFDs (Virtual User Flex Days) license is a flexible license, issued with a limited capacity per Vuser day.

For more information, see VUFD licenses.

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VUFD licenses

A VUFD license provides you with a specified number of Vusers that you can run an unlimited number of times within a 24-hour period (the Virtual User Flex Day).

VUFD licenses are considered Term licenses, valid for 24 hours after the first execution. VUFD licenses also expire one (1) year after the date of purchase, if not consumed. A VUFD license may have an expiration date and therefore be time-limited. Support is included in VUFD licenses, but there is no rehosting of the licenses.

Calculating VUFD usage

At the end of a Virtual User Flex Day, the remaining number of licensed VUFDs is calculated by subtracting the number of used VUFDs (or, in the case of concurrent usage, the maximum number of concurrent running VUFDs) from the total number of licensed VUFDs. A Vuser is included in the VUFD count as soon as the Vuser reaches the Initialization status in a scenario. If a Vuser is stopped or fails after it reaches initialization status, and is then restarted in the same run, that counts as two Vusers.

If you have both a non-VUFD license (for example, a Time Limited license) and a VUFD license for a particular Vuser protocol, LoadRunner Professional always uses the non-VUFD license before consuming the VUFD license. For example, if 500 Vusers were run on a particular day and there is a non-VUFD license for 400 Vusers, then 100 VUFDs are deducted from the VUFD license.

LoadRunner Professional determines the maximum number of Vusers that ran during the 24-hour period after the start time. For the calculation of VUFDs consumed in a VUFD license, you can specify at what time each new day begins. To change the time at which a new day begins, click the VUFDs will begin at time link in the License Utility. For details, see License Utility.

If a scenario is in progress during the time of the calculation (the time at which you set a new day to begin), VUFDs running in the scenario will be included in the calculation for both days on which it ran. For example, if you launch a scenario with 40 Vusers and it runs for 30 hours, then you will have used 40 VUFDs on two days, for a total of 80 VUFDs.

Consumed VUFDs are deducted from the available VUFD capacity at the start of the following day.

Example: You have a license that allows you to run 1,000 VUFDs. You create a performance test that requires 200 Vusers and runs for 45 minutes. You run the test at 8:00 am, 10:00 am, 2:00 pm, and at 4:00 pm. In each case, the test finishes before the next one begins. Because there is no concurrent Vuser usage, you can reuse the same 200 VUFDs for each test run, meaning that at the end of the 24-hour period, only 200 VUFDs are deducted from the license, leaving 800 for future use.

However, if you start the second run at 8:30 am, the first test is still running before the second test initializes. This overlap requires 400 Vusers to run concurrently (200 for each test). At the end of the day, 400 VUFDs are deducted from the license, because that is the highest number of concurrent Vusers. The total left for future use is 600 VUFDs.

To purchase additional VUFDs, see Product Inquiry.

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License consumption

  • A multi-protocol Vuser runs only if licenses are available for all protocols in the Vuser script.
  • If a multi-protocol script contains protocols from several bundles, you need licenses for both bundles to run the Vuser script. The license for each Vuser is subtracted from all relevant bundles. If, at a certain point, the license of one of the bundles runs out, the Vuser will start to fail, even if there are still valid licenses for some of the other protocols.

  • If you purchased licenses for several different bundles (such as Web 2.0 and Oracle E-business) or several different license types (such as Time Limited and VUFD) that share common protocols, and you want to run Vusers that belong to both bundles/types, the licenses are consumed in the following order:

    1. License type:
      1. Evaluation license
      2. Time Limited license
      3. VUFD license
    2. Protocol amount: The bundle with the smaller number of protocols will be consumed before the bundle with a larger number of protocols.
    3. Capacity: The license with the larger capacity will be consumed before the license with the lower capacity.

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See also: