Prerequisites for Running Silk Test Monitors

To run Silk Test monitors, the only software requirements are that Silk Test be installed on the execution servers where Silk Test monitors are scheduled to run.

For more information on prerequisites and Terminal Services settings, please refer to the Silk Performer Workbench Help (Load Testing Specific Application Types > GUI-Level Testing Support > Configuring Windows for GUI-Level Testing).

The majority of performance monitors configured in Performance Manager are driven by protocol-based scripts developed in Silk Performer. However some applications cannot be easily modeled with Silk Performer. These applications might use non-standard protocols or use encryptions that can not be easily scripted by Silk Performer (for example, client/server applications.) In these cases you may choose to monitor the application via a GUI-based solution with Silk Test.

Once a Silk Test monitor script has been created and configured properly in Performance Manager, the monitor will:

Periodically start Silk Test, which will open up the application-under-test (AUT)/monitor on the execution server machine.
Take control of the keyboard and cursor of the execution server machine.
Physically execute the script in the application GUI.
Capture application performance metrics using pre-defined timers.
Close the application-under-test/monitor.
Close Silk Test.
Send the application performance data back to the Performance Manager application server.