How do I: Add virtual user licenses to Visual Studio Test Controller 2010 RC

Visual Studio Test Controller 2010 introduces a new licensing system for the load tests. By default, if you run the load tests in your local machine, the maximum virtual user load is up to 250. If you want to run load tests that have a user load over than 250, you may need to run the load tests in certain agents via test controller. A test controller is required to schedule the load test run, as well, the controller manages all the licensed virtual users that can be used to emulate user load in the load test.

You may read this article from Ed Glas’s blog to get more information.

After you install the Visual Studio 2010 Test Controller, by default, no valid virtual user license is installed. To check the virtual user licenses, you can do the following:

• Click “Start” menu, launch Visual Studio Test Controller 2010 Configuration Tool.
• Click “Manage virtual user licenses” button on the bottom of the configuration dialog.

From the Summary section, you may check how many virtual users are allowed to run in a load test and the highest virtual user load happened in a previous test run.

Add virtual user licenses to the Test Controller 2010 RC

You may need to add some Visual Studio Virtual User Pack 2010 licenses to your Test Controller in order to increase the available user load for load test. You can do this via a command prompt.

• Click “Start” menu, type “Visual Studio Command Prompt 2010” then press ENTER to open a command window (ensure you opened this window in an administrator mode. )
• Type the following command and press ENTER.
  TestControllerConfig.exe licenses /addkey:V10000
• Type “exit” then press ENTER to close the command window.

Here we go, check out the virtual user license again in Test Controller Configuration Tool and enjoy!

Note, you cannot add this license key though the Manage virtual user license dialog, And what’s more important, this license key only works for the pre-release Visual Studio SKUs, i.e. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 or RC.