Summary

The End-User Performance solutions gives insight in the availability and performance of an IT-service from the perspective of an end-user. By collecting end-user information, a decreasing IT-service availability or performance can be measured and signaled before users start complaining. This simulation package is designed to quickly start measuring the availability and performance of webpages.

Simulation flow

The Open Sites simulation can be used to simulate an employee opening a webpage (internet, intranet or SharePoint Webpage). The simulation will open the specified webpage addresses sequentially in Internet Explorer and measures the time to open Internet Explorer and load the webpage. The webpage should contain the given content match string in order to flag the step as successful.

The list below summarizes the steps performed during the simulation:

1. Start Internet Explorer
2. Open specified URL
3. Perform content match on the webpage content
4. Close Internet Explorer

Optional, the DNS cache can be flushed at the start of the simulation. By flushing the DNS cache the simulation verifies if domain names can be found and the time the DNS lookup takes.

Prerequisites

Usage of this simulation package requires that:

• The End-User Performance Management Pack is imported in SCOM
• One or more Collectors are enabled using overrides
• One or more Watchers are available to run simulations
• Internet Explorer installed on the Watcher node(s)

Download packages

The simulation package can be downloaded here.

The packages contains the following files:

1. EUP_OpenSites.exe: Executable performing the simulation
2. EUP_OpenSites.ini: Configuration file for the simulation
3. Config.xml: Example file which can be used to adjust the Collector configuration
4. Readme.txt: File containing a link to this documentation

For more information about the version history, supported upgrade paths, and known issues, see this knowledge base article.

Configuration

The simulation behavior can be adjusted by changing the configuration in the .ini file delivered in the package and the config.xml from the Collectors. Follow the steps below to start using the Open Sites simulation:

1. Extract the contents of the simulation package to the desired path on the watcher node
2. Add the content of the file ‘config.xml’ to the configuration files on each of the used End-User Performance Collectors
3. Adjust the parameters (id, names, locations, etc.) in the copied content (step 2) to the desired values. See the installation and usage guide for additional information about the configuration file
4. Change the configuration of the Open Sites simulation by editing the file ‘EUP_OpenSites.ini’. Adjust the parameters below:

1. Create a task scheduler job to schedule the simulation script