Adjust HCIBench Run Time

This post assumes that everything has been set up and configured correctly for HCIBench.

After filling out all the sections, Select “Easy Run”, Save Configuration(always Save Config after any changes), and Validate. This will do a quick check and make sure everything looks good.

Here is where the tricky part comes into play, we are going to hit the hit the Test button, wait for Easy Mode to create its own parameter file, then cancel the test. For this, we will need to be consoled into the HCIBench appliance and watching a specific folder for the file to be created.

When we hit the Test, button we will hop over to the console and watch for the file in /opt/automation/vdbench-param-files the file should be created in just a minute or two.

There is the file so we can Cancel the testing.

Alright, testing is canceled so let’s take stock of what we have. We now have a parameter file the HCIBench created for EasyMode, which should be a parameter file specifically created for this environment. However, the parameter file also has the time value in it we want to change so the test will run for the amount of time we want.

Let’s open that parameter file and change the time setting using vi.

In this file, I changed the warmup time and the elapsed time to 900 each. Being in seconds this is 15 minutes each. Generally you would want to set the test to run for longer, several hours or even days, but for my lab environment where I am mainly playing the with appliance this was more than sufficient.

Alright, let’s check one more file, then head back to the gui to finish up.

Let’s head over to /opt/automation/conf and look at the perf-conf.yaml file.

I normally just cat the file and screenshot as I am going to need one piece of info from here in just a second.

Alright, back in the gui we need to make just a couple of changes. Let’s uncheck the Easy Run. You will see that “Number of VMs” is blank so let’s fill in the number there from the screen shot we just took, in this case 6.

Select a Vdbench config file is blank. Hit the refresh button and it should populate with the file edited just a couple minutes ago. If it doesn’t, just use the drop down and select it. Should look something like this.

If you scroll down a bit further, you will see a field listed as “Testing Duration” and wonder why I am going through this whole process in the first place. Well….. I have had very mixed results using that field and I have found my method here seems a bit more consistent. Besides once performed a couple of times it only takes a couple of minutes to do it this way.

Alright, Save Configuration….Validate(to make sure everything still looks good, and then Test!

Enjoy and hopefully this helps.