Linux as Load Generator - High load on the server with only few users

Hi everyone,

after the installation and the configuration of HP LoadRunner 11.52, I run a short test. About 100 virtual users were running and the load average was to my surprise at about 40. All cpu cores were at 100%. The number of total transactions had then a free fall and a lot of download timeout (120 seconds) can be seen.

Did you guy experience the same behavior and has some advices for me?

Here the data to the load controller/generators (each physical server)

Hardware

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2680, 2.7 GHz, 8 CPU cores

RAM: 8 GB

Hard disk: 500 GB

Software

Controller: HP LoadRunner 11.52, Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit

Generator: HP LoadRunner 11.52, RHEL 6.6 (Santiago), 64 bit

On the load generator

The prerequisite packages glibc.i686, libstdcüü.i686 and ncurses-libs.i686 were installed. Following configurations were made in /etc/sysctl.conf

fs.file-max = 16384
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range=1024 65535
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle=1

Output of the verify_generator is as followed

Product: LoadRunner 11.52
Version: 11.52.4392.0
Build: 4392

abc.xyz....com:

verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
Warning: The file .rhosts does not exist in the home directory of the user.
Command ypmatch not found
Command ypcat not found
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK
verify_generator...OK

Thanks and regards

Nam