Re: Stress testing

From Al Macintyre

Before we did physical inventory for the first time on our ERP, the office 
manager had a test ... first he gave everyone a briefing - we will want you 
sing out if ANYONE notices any degradation, and we made sure everyone knew 
what that meant.  When we were told to START we were to be keying in dummy 
data just as fast as we could, to see if the software accepted the data 
without any slow down.

Then we started with one person & every few minutes added another one person 
to the pot, and as I recall we had no degradation until we hit person number 
six.

The reason for this test was that I had expressed some concern about the 
physical inventory data being ONE FILE ... might there be any degradation 
with A LOT of people simultaneously adding records to the SAME FILE?

Later, as one of the steps of a different ERP implementation, we did the same 
kind of thing, clusters of people working in various applications ... key as 
fast as you can, any old garbage, just to see if there is any degradation 
when we have large numbers of people in the SAME APPLICATION at the same time.

I believe this sort of test is documented within ERP project implementation 
guidelines that are irrespective of the host computer system, 400 or 
otherwise.  It is one of many things that an implementation team does to make 
sure that the overall system has the capacity for the expected load.

If you are looking for 400 performance issues that will hit your box, thanks 
to a new ERP to be implemented, or new facilities to be added to your 
corporate support needs, or revised ways of connecting PCs, then you need to 
get at the IBM Sizing Questionairre that IBM has tailored to many different 
ERPs.  Check with your IBM & ERP partners to get the right one for you.

You feed into the sizing questionairre some information about the ERP 
applications you will be using, the number of connected sessions of which 
kinds, the performance you expect, the volumes of transactions, lots of stuff 
& out cranks IBM reccommendation about hardware needed to support this.

If you are looking for everything that could possibly go wrong with an ERP 
that has flawed software or flawed training of the personnel, but of course 
you do not know where the flaws are & need testing to locate them, and thus 
should be included in your testing regimen, then perhaps the place to start 
is http://www.apics.org

When we converted from BPCS/36 to BPCS 405 CD, we had a series of conference 
room pilots which generated identification of several hundred problems that 
had to be fixed before we could go live.

If you know WHICH ERP this is for ... you might check with the internet 
discussion groups SPECIFIC to that ERP ... people already in that ERP might 
have some tips for you regarding structural problems specific to that ERP & 
common mistakes made in its implementation.

I am sending extra copy of my reply direct to you because some of my posts to 
midrange L & BPCS L seem to go into a limbo of not showing up for days, while 
others bounce back to me within hours & I never know in advance which will be 
which.

>  From:    Art_Baker@baan.com (Art Baker)

>  Hello,
>   I am looking for information on stress testing an ERP implemention
>  on AS400. There is the basic ERP software plus some customizations and
>  integrations. Is there a redbook or other recommendations you might have
>  implementing a test?
>  Thanks,
>  Art 

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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