We have released the Exchange Load Generator 2010 Beta to our downloads site.

Exchange Load Generator 2010 Beta (64 bit)

Exchange Load Generator 2010 Beta (32 bit)

There have been several changes made since the last available build. Some of the "coolest" ones are listed below.

Changes

• Requirement Changes:
  • Now requires .NET framework 3.5
  • Now requires Vista/W2k8 for Loadgen client OS
• No longer requires Exchange Management Tools! One less item to install!
• Configuration File Schema Change:
  • We have changed the config file schema again. We had to change the schema to make it easier for our other module owners to create tasks for their protocols.
  • Your existing configuration files will not work with this new version of Loadgen. You will have to re-create them.

New Features

• ActiveSync Module!
• Dynamic Mail Content Generator; no more messy message files to play with!

You can specify:

• Min/Max/Avg message size
• Default language (English, French, Spanish, Korean, Turkish)
• Language Variation %
• Default Body Type (html, rtf, text)
• Body Type Variation %
• Embedded Message Frequency

The dynamic mail generator is setup by default for initialization. If you would like to use it during test runs you will need to adjust the XML to remove the message files.

We currently do not have a UI for this feature. You will have to customize your Loadgen XML to take advantage of this. Please see the end of this post for some more details about this.

• UI enhancements:
  • User group page shows the separate selection of ActionProfile and MailboxStoreProfile we also enable/disable columns based on module selected.
• Mailbox Profile for initialization now based on mailbox size:
  • Settings range from 2mb to 2GB.
• Public Folder Initialization:
  • You are now able to enable or disable public folder init.
  • The checkbox to disable PF initialization will only be visible if you have a PF configured.
• Loadgen will skip Free/Busy initialization if no public store exists
• Log files in their own directory!
  • We have tried to clean up our Exchange Load Generator folder by moving things out of it. You will notice that log files are no longer being created here. They are now created under "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%/Microsoft/Exchange Load Generator".
  • We have added a shortcut under the Exchange Load Generator folder that will direct you to this rather cryptic location.
• New Junk Mail Rule action
  • Create default additional folders, i.e. Sync Issues, Conflicts, Local Failures, Server Failures, Junk E-mail, at the time of first logon during simulation. This is what Outlook does, applies to both Outlook 2003 and 2007.
  • LoadGen simulation code will only do default JunkEmail  rule creation with blank blocking sender list/safer sender list.
• Calendar Items have reminders turned off by default

Known Issues

• MUST create a new XML because of schema changes.
• OWA Module
  • If running OWA load against E12 use the OWA2007Module.
  • The OWAModule is for E14 only.
• ActiveSync - be careful which profile you choose as they will only work on certain server builds:
  • V12 - Exchange 2007
  • V12.1 - Exchange 2007 SP1 & Exchange 2007 SP2
  • V14 - Exchange 2010
• Dynamic Mail Generator is not linked to the UI. Therefore if you add the dynamic mail generator to your XML, we will not be able to create the mailbox size that you specified in the UI.
  • We have future workitems to integrate the dynamic mail generator more with the UI.
  • You will still have the ability to have Loadgen send message files it just will no longer do that by default.

Sample XML modifications:

Replace the MessageFiles XML tag with the following GeneratedMailProfile XML tag:

MessageSizeParameters:  Min, max and average in bytes:

• MinimumSize: default value = 100
• MaximumSize: default value = 100000
• AverageSize: default value = 30000

LanguageParameters: Language to use, weighted as follows:

• EnglishLanguageWeight: default value = 100
• FrenchLanguageWeight: default value = 0
• KoreanLanguageWeight: default value = 0
• SpanishLanguageWeight: default value = 0
• TurkishLanguageWeight: default value = 0

BodyTypeParameters:  Type of body to use:

• HtmlBodyWeight: default value = 70
• PlainTextBodyWeight: default value = 5
• RtfBodyWeight: default value = 15

AttachmentParameters:  Whether and how often to add attachments:

• AttachFrequency: default value = 0.05
• AttachmentCount
  •   MinimumCount: default value = 1
  •   MaximumCount: default value = 5
  •   AverageCount: default value = 1

MessageFiles:  Files to use for attachments (local paths only). Files can be anything, but they will be attached as a binary object not a message.

• MessageFile
  •   Weight: default value = 840
  •   Pathname: default value = messages\msg00001.msg or messages\*

New versions of loadgen will automatically use the dynamic mail generator for the mailboxstoreprofile for init.

Those changes will then look something like this:

- <TaskConfig d6p1:type="GeneratedMailProfileTask" xmlns:d6p1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <TaskCount>0</TaskCount>
- <TaskParameters d6p1:type="GeneratedMailParameters">
  <ExtendedProperties />
- <MessageSizeParameters>
  <MinimumSize>100</MinimumSize>
  <MaximumSize>100000</MaximumSize>
  <AverageSize>30000</AverageSize>
  </MessageSizeParameters>
- <LanguageParameters>
  <EnglishLanguageWeight>100</EnglishLanguageWeight>
  <FrenchLanguageWeight>0</FrenchLanguageWeight>
  <KoreanLanguageWeight>0</KoreanLanguageWeight>
  <SpanishLanguageWeight>0</SpanishLanguageWeight>
  <TurkishLanguageWeight>0</TurkishLanguageWeight>
  </LanguageParameters>
- <BodyTypeParameters>
  <HtmlBodyWeight>70</HtmlBodyWeight>
  <PlainTextBodyWeight>5</PlainTextBodyWeight>
  <RtfBodyWeight>15</RtfBodyWeight>
  </BodyTypeParameters>
- <AttachmentParameters>
  <AttachFrequency>0.05</AttachFrequency>
- <AttachmentCount>
  <MinimumCount>1</MinimumCount>
  <MaximumCount>5</MaximumCount>
  <AverageCount>1</AverageCount>
  </AttachmentCount>
- <MessageFiles>
- <MessageFile>
  <Weight>840</Weight>
  <Pathname>messages\msg00001.msg</Pathname>
  </MessageFile>
  </MessageFiles>
  </AttachmentParameters>
  </TaskParameters>
  </TaskConfig>

Please give us feedback on our new features! Our dev team has been working hard to make the tool easier for you to use.

- Erin Bookey