Define service level agreements (SLAs)

Service level agreements (SLAs) are specific goals that you define for your performance test. After a test run, LoadRunner Analysis compares these goals against performance related data that was gathered and stored during the course of the run, and determines whether the SLA passed or failed.

In this topic:

Determine the SLA status

Depending on the measurements that you are evaluating for your goal, LoadRunner Enterprise determines the SLA status in one of the following ways:

SLA Type	Description
SLA status determined at time intervals over a timeline	Analysis displays SLA statuses at set time intervals over a timeline within the test run. At each time interval in the timeline—for example, every 10 seconds—Analysis checks to see if the measurement's performance deviated from the threshold defined in the SLA. Measurements that can be evaluated in this way: Average Transaction Response Time Errors per Second
SLA status determined over the whole run	Analysis displays a single SLA status for the whole test run. Measurements that can be evaluated in this way: Transaction Response Time - Percentile Total Hits per run Average Hits (hits/second) per run Total Throughput (bytes) per run Average Throughput (bytes/second) per run

Back to top

Tracking period

When you define service level agreements (SLAs) for measurements that are evaluated over a timeline, Analysis determines SLA statuses at specified time intervals within that timeline. The frequency of the time intervals is called the tracking period.

An internally-calculated tracking period is defined by default. You can change this tracking period by defining a value which Analysis plugs into a built-in algorithm to calculate the tracking period.

To change the tracking period:

1. In the Performance Test Designer, click the Summary tab.

2. In the Service Level Agreement pane, click the Tracking Period button. For details, see Service Level Agreement pane.

3. Change the tracking period as required:

   UI Elements	Description
   Internally calculated tracking period	Analysis automatically sets a tracking period over which SLA statuses are determined. Minimum tracking period: 5 seconds
   Tracking period of at least <xx> seconds	Analysis sets the tracking period as close as possible to the value specified here. Minimum tracking period: 5 seconds Example: Assume that you select a tracking period of X=10, and assume that the aggregation granularity for the performance test is 6. The tracking period is set to the nearest multiple of 6 that is greater than or equal to 10. That is, Tracking Period = 12. For this option, Analysis uses the following formula: Tracking Period = Max(5 seconds, m(Aggregation Granularity)) where m is a multiple of the performance test's aggregation granularity such that m(Aggregation Granularity) is greater than or equal to X.

Back to top

Define SLAs

This task describes how to define service level agreements (SLAs). SLAs measure performance test goals over time intervals during a test run, or over a whole performance test run.

This section explains the workflow for defining service level agreements.

1. Prerequisites

   Create a performance test. For details, see Design performance tests.

   Note: To define Average Transaction Response Time or Transaction Response Time Percentile SLAs, your performance test must include a script that contains at least one transaction.

2. Run through the SLA wizard

   In the Performance Test Designer, click Summary. In the Service Level Agreement pane, click New to open the Service Level Agreement wizard. For user interface details, see Service Level Agreement wizard.

   1. Select a measurement for the SLA.

   2. If you are defining an SLA for Transaction Response Time (Average/ Percentile), select the transactions to include in your goal.

   3. (Optional) When evaluating SLA statuses over a timeline, select a load criterion to take into account and define appropriate load value ranges for the load criterion.

   4. Set thresholds for the measurements.

   • If the values of Transaction Response Time (Average/Percentile) or Errors per Second exceed the defined thresholds, Analysis will produce a Failed SLA status.

   • If the values of Total Hits, Average Hits per Second, Total Throughput, or Average Throughput are lower than the defined threshold, Analysis will produce a Failed SLA status.

3. Define a tracking period - optional

   For measurements whose SLA statuses are determined over time intervals, you need to define the frequency of the time intervals, known as the tracking period. For details, see Tracking period.

4. Results

   During post test run analysis, LoadRunner Analysis compares the data collected from the test run against the settings defined in the SLAs, and determines SLA statuses which are included in the default Summary Report and the SLA Report.

   To learn more, see the Analysis section of the LoadRunner Professional Help Center.

Back to top

SLA report

The SLA report displays the post-run SLA statuses of the SLA goals defined for the performance test.

1. From the LoadRunner Enterprise navigation toolbar, click and selectTest Management (under Testing).

2. Select a performance test in the test management tree, and click the Runs tab.

3. Right-click a test run and select SLA Report.

   User interface elements are described below:

   UI Elements	Description
   	Export to Excel. Enables you to export the selected section of the SLA report to an Excel file.
   	Export to PDF. Enables you to export the selected section of the SLA report to a .pdf file.
   	Export to CSV. Enables you to export the selected section of the SLA report to a .csv file.
   	Export to Word. Enables you to export the selected section of the SLA report to a Word file.
   <Test run details>	The details of the performance test run to which the SLA report data relates are displayed at the top of the report.
   <SLA grids>	The results for each SLA are displayed in separate grids. Tip: Each set of results can be exported to Excel, Word, PDF, and CSV format.
   <SLA status indicators>	. Indicates a failed SLA status. . Indicates a passed SLA status. . Indicates that there is no data about the SLA status.

Back to top

See also:

• View and analyze test results