Stress and Performance Tool: Create Users and Contacts

 

Topic Last Modified: 2011-07-18

You must use the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 User Creation tool (Stressconfig.exe) to create users and contacts in preparation for stress and performance load testing.

Terms Used in This Section

The following is a list of terms and definitions that you might find useful as you’re reading through this topic.

• SQL BE – SQL Server Back End physical active node/host

• Port – The port used for SIP or TCP connections

• Organizational Unit – The Active Directory organizational unit (OU)

• Public IM Connectivity – Percentage of users that will be enabled to communicate with users from other Instant Messaging (IM) services (such as MSN, AOL, and Yahoo!)

• Archiving Enabled – Percentage of users whose IM and web conferencing data will be archived

• Enterprise Voice Start/End Index – The range of users who will be enabled for Enterprise Voice; that is, enabled for using a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone at their desk

• U.S. Phone Numbers – The phone number that is assigned to users in addition to the SIP URI used for routing inbound and outbound calls and reverse number lookup (RNL)

Create Users and Contacts

You must use the Lync Server User Creation tool to create users and contacts for load simulation. The Lync Server User Creation tool is installed with the Lync Server Stress and Performance Tool package. Ensure that the package installer (CapacityPlanningTool.msi) has been run on the User Services/Front End Server or the Standard Edition server. Start the Lync Server Creation Tool by running the file Stressconfig.exe on the User Services/Front End Server or the Standard Edition server.

Important

You must be logged on as a member of the Domain Admins security group in order to run Stressconfig.exe. It is necessary to run from this context because StressConfig.exe will be creating and configuring new Active Directory users.

When the Lync Server User Creation tool opens, click Load Configuration File. To begin configuring users and contacts, load the default file that is included in the package, SampleData.ini. This will prepopulate the fields with example data that you will need to revise for your system. If you have a preconfigured INI file that already contains customized settings, load that file instead.

Fill in the fields in the Lync Server User Creation tool as described in the following sections.

Note

When creating a lot of users (10,000 or more), run Stressconfig.exe from a high-end computer. Note that the domain controller will also experience higher load while the users are being created. In our tests, there were 6.25 users created/second. The maximum number of users we tested with was 80,000; we do not recommend creating more than 100,000 users.

Server

The Server tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool is shown in the following figure.

Server tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool

To configure server options, follow these steps:

1. In Server or pool FQDN, type the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the Standard Edition server or Front End pool on which you want to host the users. Click the arrow button to specify the local computer.

2. In Port, type the number of the port that receives SIP traffic for your deployment (by default, 5061).

3. In SQL BE Machine, type the name of the SQL Server Back End physical active node.

4. In SQL Instance, type the database name.

5. In Organizational Unit, type the name of the Active Directory OU where you want to create the User objects. If the OU does not exist, it will be created.

6. Click Save to commit the changes to the INI configuration file that you loaded earlier.

7. Click Next to proceed to the next tab.

General Settings

The General Settings tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool is shown in the following figure.

The General Settings tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool

To configure general settings, follow these steps:

1. In Prefix for user names, type a prefix that you want to use to build user names for testing purposes. Because the Lync Server 2010 Load Configuration Tool (UserProfileGenerator.exe) requires that the password be the same as the user name, accept the default password.

   Important

   Note that the user name will also be the password, so it must meet the domain’s password policy and the users need to be disabled after load testing is completed.

2. In Start number for usernames, type or click the index at which to begin numbering the users.

3. In Number of users, type or click the total number of users that you want to create.

4. In SIPDomain for users’ URI, type the domain used for the SIP Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). This is what the user uses to log on to Lync Server. This domain can be different from user account domain.

5. In User account domain, type the Active Directory domain logon.

6. In Contacts Settings, do the following:

   • In Average number of contacts per user, use the default profile of 50.

   • In Percent of contacts in the same pool/HS, use the default of 100% in the same pool or home server. This value plus the Percent of contacts out of enterprise (federated) must be less than or equal to 100. If it is less than 100, the remaining contacts will be on different pools in the same enterprise. For example, if you have Percent of contacts in the same pool/HS set to 50% and Percent of contacts out of enterprise (federated) set to 30%, the remaining 20% of the contacts will be on a different pool. The pools and federated domains are specified on the Contacts tab.

   • In Average number of groups per user, use the default of 8 contact groups.

   • In Max number of contacts per user, use the default of 1000. Note that there will be very few users with that many contacts; the average is 50.

   • In Percent of contacts out of enterprise (federated), use the default of 0.

   • In Max number of groups per user, use the default of 35.

7. Click Save to commit to changes to the INI configuration file.

8. Click Next to proceed to the next tab.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)

The VOIP tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool is shown in the following figure.

The VOIP tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool

On the VOIP tab, you can apply VoIP-related properties to the created users as follows:

1. In Area Code, type or click the area code that you want to assign to the users.

2. Click Save to commit to changes to the INI configuration file that you opened.

3. Click Next to proceed to the next tab.

Note

Only U.S. formatted phone numbers are supported. Phone numbers are always assigned to users and all users created by StressConfig.exe are enabled for Enterprise Voice. Any scenarios that use the phone number, such as Conferencing Auto Attendant or UC-PSTN calls, use this phone number to properly route calls. As such every user has to have a unique phone number. If you have to create users twice, the command will fail unless on the second attempt either you use a different area code or the previous users have been disabled by using the Disable-CsUser cmdlet.

Users

The Users tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool is shown in the following figure.

The Users tab of the Lync Server Creation tool

The Users tab displays the settings that you have configured so you can verify that the parameters are correct. If the parameters are not correct, go back to the preceding tabs and revise the settings. When all the parameters are correct, click Create Users. This will create the users in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).

Note

While AD DS is updating, Users created, Users found, and Errors counts will be displayed at the bottom of the window. If Errors displays a value greater than zero, you should go back to the preceding tabs and review your configuration. In addition, a trace file that you can review is automatically generated and saved to the same folder in which the tool is located.

The Lync Server Front End Server or Standard Edition server User Replicator application populates the accounts in the database on the Back End Server. This can take several minutes to complete, depending on how many users you are creating. For this to occur, at least one Front End Server must have the Lync Server Front-End service running.

If the users already exist, they are updated with any changes. You can validate that the users were created by logging on as one of the users in the range. Use the user prefix, user number, and @sipDomain as the user name (such as LyncUser10@contoso.com) and the user prefix and user number (such as LyncUser10) as the password.

Contacts

The Contacts tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool is shown in the following figure.

The Contacts tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool

Before creating contacts, user replication performed from the Users tab should be complete. In addition, to avoid any problems when creating contacts, none of the users should be signed in.

1. In Global Settings, verify that the parameters are correct. This information is obtained from the General Settings tab.

2. In the table, enter a row for each federated domain you want to have contacts with and each pool that you want to have contacts with. For each row, make sure there is a different number in the EntID column.

3. The row with the CurrentPool column checked is the pool in which you are creating the contacts.

4. Click Create Contacts to begin the contact creation. The contacts will be newly created or, if they already exist, recreated. This operation can take several minutes and, after it is complete, a dialog box will appear that says Contacts Generation Completed. You can validate the contacts that were created by logging on as a user that was created from the Users tab.

   Important

   If you have just created your users, you need to wait until Lync Server replication completes and populates the user accounts in the database. If the users have not finished replicating, you will see an error stating “Enterprise N users in pool myServer.contoso.com not all accounted for. Users N only contain N actual users.”

   If contacts are not created, you will receive an error message. The following are some of the common errors that can occur.

   • Enterprise '{0}' users in pool '{1}' not all accounted for. Users {2} - {3} only contain {4} actual users. The contacts for the pool fall out of the range of actual created users; check your user ranges. Contacts cannot be created for users that do not exist (unless they are federated; see “Federation” in the Stress and Performance Tool: Advanced Configuration topic).

   • Enterprise '{0}' users in pool '{1}' already have contacts. Users {2} - {3} have on average {4} contacts (total contacts = {5}). Some or all of the users already have contacts assigned. While not ideal, you may ignore this warning because old contacts will be deleted and new contacts created based on the settings provided.

   • Enterprise '{0}' has only one pool! PercInPool for enterprise '{1}' will be set to 100%. An enterprise has just one pool so all contacts will be from that pool. This is by design; you can safely ignore this warning.

5. If you want to delete contacts, click Delete Contacts to purge them.

6. Click Save to commit to changes to the INI configuration file.

7. Click Next to proceed to the next tab.

Distribution List

The Distribution List tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool is shown in the following figure.

The Distribution List tab of the Lync Server User Creation tool

One of the features of the Lync Server 2010 Stress and Performance Tool is to simulate the distribution list (DL) expansion feature in Microsoft Lync 2010. If you are not going to enable DL expansion, there is no need to create distribution lists.

The Distribution List tab allows you to create DLs that the Stress and Performance tool will use for that feature. Prior to creating DLs, you must have run Microsoft Exchange Server forest prep, otherwise the DL attributes do not exist in the Active Directory schema and the tool will not be able to create DLs.

1. In DistributionListNumber, type the total number of DLs you want to create. (We recommend that you start with twice the number of users). They are numbered from 0 to n-1.

2. In DistributionListPrefix, type the prefix that the DLs will have. For example if you specify 100 DLs and a prefix of MyDL, the DLs will be named MyDL0, MyDL1, and so on through MyDL99.

3. In DistributionListOU, type the Active Directory OU where the users exist. This is the same value that is specified as Organization Unit on the Server tab. All the DLs will be created in the same OU.

4. Click Create Distribution Lists to create the DLs. The tool queries AD DS to see if DLs matching the prefix and numbers already exist and will create only those that do not exist.

5. If there are pre-existing DLs that you do not want to use, click Delete Distribution Lists to purge all DLs matching the prefix and number specified.

6. Click Save & Exit to commit to changes to the INI configuration file and exit the tool.