SMC Journal

Shifting Left With LoadRunner Developer

Demonstrating LoadRunner Developer and how to use it within a standard IDE like VS Code to produce low level load testing of new features, with the testing executed by the developers. Scott comments on the value of shifting left and shows that many of the statements about LoadRunner not being viable for developers is untrue.
Additional links to check out as referenced in this episode:
LRD Overview: https://youtu.be/5kmJbhN0za8Running LoadRunner in Jenkins (CI): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bS0DAwh6vMLRD Support for Microsoft Azure Devops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoXUzAxPYj8LoadRunner Developer Academy: https://www.youtube.com/@loadrunnerdeveloperacademy9025
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Micro Focus and LoadRunner solutions. Performance matters. Did you know that LoadRunner solutions have the largest community of practitioners? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO
For a video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/uQRUog9tqn4
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee

DDOS Attacks and BOT Mitigation

DDOS attacks are on the rise. In this episode, we discuss the types of attacks and how to create a mitigation strategy against bad BOTS. Ron Foster from Saltworks Security shares how to identify and mitigate these kinds of attacks.
For a video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/0GdURRSP_6E
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: [https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee](https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee)
Show Notes
On March 8th, a complex DDOS attack affected both Datadog, Catchpoint, and WebPageTesthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35075616
Netscout finds DDoS attacks have jumped almost sixfold since 2019https://siliconangle.com/2023/04/04/netscout-finds-ddos-attacks-increase-487-since-2019/
DDoS Mitigation: The Definitive Buyer’s Guidehttps://www.imperva.com/learn/ddos/ddos-mitigation-services/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape.  They are the makers of Saltworks Saltminer, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views. 
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements.  SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery. https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks

My Virtualization Server

How does a performance engineer approach building a high performance virtualization server on a budget?
For a video version of this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/embed/6CpEn1mOYBk
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
Scott Moore builds his own virtualization server. Parts used:
Supermicro M11SDV-8C-LN4F
iStarUSA Group D-214-MATX
SAMSUNG 990 PRO NVME 1TB Drive
Crucial RAM 32GB (4 of these to make 128GB of RAM)
Supermicro SSD-DM032-SMCMVN1 32GB SATA DOM
Noctua NF-A8 PWM
Antec NeoECO Gold Zen Series NE500G Zen Power Supply
Noctua 60x25mm NF-A6x25
Total Cost = $1,758.11
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Micro Focus and LoadRunner solutions. Performance matters. Did you know that LoadRunner solutions have the largest community of practitioners? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO

Software Engineering News - Spring 2023

The latest information in software engineering, including new product releases, acquisition, and news items centered around performance testing, observability, AIOps, and more.
For a video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/KIGjIm4mSds
HPE to acquire OpsRamp AIOps Platform:
https://devops.com/hpe-to-acquire-opsramp-to-gain-aiops-platform/ 
Smartbear Acquires Aspecto:
https://smartbear.com/news/news-releases/smartbear-acquires-opentelemetry-pioneer-aspecto/ 
Grafana Labs Acquires Pyroscope:
https://devops.com/grafana-labs-acquires-pyroscope-to-add-code-profiling-capability/ 
Honeycomb Secures $50M in Funding:
https://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/Honeycomb-Secures-50M-in-Funding-Round-to-Boost-its-Observability-Platform-158037.aspx 
LoadRunner Releases new version:
https://community.microfocus.com/adtd/b/sws-alm/posts/loadrunner-professional-2023-has-now-been-released 
Wordpress 6.2 Gets a Performance Bump:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LroIJoYz-O9CpfJzaiKYYMWJ7GbE5RZoW1rf1R4FqyA/edit#gid=0 
Is there a 4th Pillar to Observability?
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/04/03/2639758/0/en/Rookout-Makes-Snapshots-the-Fourth-Pillar-of-Observability-Capturing-Deep-Code-Level-Insights-for-Developers.html 
New Relic To Integrate with ChatGPT:
https://devops.com/new-relic-bets-on-ai-to-advance-observability/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape. They are the makers of Saltworks Saltminer, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views.
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements. SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery.
https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks
 

OpenTelemetry Profiling?

Profiles are an exciting new data type in OpenTelemetry coming soon to help round out what is possible with OpenTelemetry instrumentation. Josh Lee from Instana dives into the details.
Episode: 120Air Date: 04/18/2023Title: Opentelemetry ProfilingGUEST: Josh Lee (Instana)LINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamlee/
For a video version of this episode: https://youtu.be/eU_CIi4jd0w
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
Josh Lee’s presentation at CMG Impact 2023:
https://www.cmg.org/2023/02/hey-nice-profile-the-future-of-profiling-in-opentelemetry/
 
Check out this other podcast with Josh Lee.
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Micro Focus and LoadRunner solutions. Performance matters. Did you know that LoadRunner solutions have the largest community of practitioners? Join the community at https://community.microfocus.com/adtd/b/sws-alm 
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO

Security Testing With SaltMiner

Scott Moore interviews the Founder of Saltworks Security about their new SaltMiner Community Edition software, and how they help security testers in a DevOps world handle CI pipelines.
For a video version of this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/embed/has7ALblTAc
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
Saltworks Security helps security teams build automated security scans into their DevOps pipelines. They have just released a new version of their SaltMiner Community Edition product. It is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. Scott Moore interviews the Founder and President Dennis Hurst. They discuss how security teams and performance engineers confront some of the same issues shifting left, and how to implement CI/CD at companies that are at various levels of maturity.
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape. They are the makers of Saltminer, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views.
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements. SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery.
https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks
 
 

Big News For Performance Engineers Globally

James Pulley and Brian Bernknopf share big news about a company acquisition that affects the performance engineering community as a whole.
Episode: 118Air Date: 04/04/2023Title: Big News For Performance Engineers GloballyGUEST: James PulleyLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslpulley3/
For a video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/embed/0VT8rTMKsXA
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
ALTEN Acquires QA Consultants, Bringing Independent Software Quality Engineering Capabilities to its Services Portfoliohttps://qaconsultants.com/news/alten-acquires-qa-consultants/
The Performance Tour Live Event in Austin on 04/25/223
https://bit.ly/perftouraustin23
 
Check out this other video with James Pulley.
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Micro Focus and LoadRunner solutions. Performance matters. Did you know that LoadRunner solutions have the largest community of practitioners? Join the community at https://community.microfocus.com/adtd/b/sws-alm 
The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO

Load Testing With Parallel

Parallel is a new SaaS load testing solution. What makes it different from other load testing products?
Episode: 117Air Date: 03/28/2023Title: Load testing with ParallelGUEST:  Yev SpektorLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yevgeniyspektor/
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
Scott Moore interviews Yev Spektor, the founder of Parallel
https://www.prl.dev/  Topics covered:
Tell me about you and your background as it relates to load testing?  What drove you to starting Parallel?  Who is Parallel for - which persona (developer, perf tester, software engineers, non-technical users)?  Explain briefly how the product works (demo) The real value in any load testing product is in the test results and analysis as this is what should lead you to the underlying reason for performance bottlenecks. What does Parallel provide in the way of analysis and how does it help to locate and pinpoint performance issues?  What is the vision for the product (roadmap)?

What New in LoadRunner 2023?

Guest David McLeish shares all the new features and updates of LoadRunner 2023.
Episode: 116Air Date: 03/21/2023Title: What's New With LoadRunner 2023GUEST: David McLeishLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-mcleish-58a9b62/
 
To see this episode in video format: https://youtu.be/3w32Mc5HqSk
 
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
The latest features and updates. They include
Virtual User Days (Flex Users) are back
Citrix Protocol Updates
Steadybit integration for additional resilience platforms
Updates to Prometheus integration (HTTPS)
We also talk about why the footprint in browser-based protocols like TruClient are so large.
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Micro Focus and Opentext. Performance matters. Did you know that Opentext has the largest community of practitioners? Join the community at https://community.microfocus.com/adtd/b/sws-alm 
Performance Engineering Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO

Real User Monitoring and Website Performance

How does Real User Monitoring metrics provide? How important is a high score in Google Lighthouse to website performance?
Episode: 115Air Date: 03/14/2023Title: Real User Monitoring and Website PerformanceGUEST: Erwin HofmanLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erwinhofman/
For a video version of this episode: https://smcjournal.com/episode/real-user-monitoring-and-website-performance/
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
Website: https://www.rumvision.com/Erwin Hofman: https://www.erwinhofman.com/