Enabling Windows Media Services for Load Testing

Before your server can be put through a load test using Windows Media Load Simulator, you must create a file called WMLoad.asf and place it in the folder %SystemDrive%\WMPub\WMRoot or in the directory you’ve specified as the default on your Windows Media server. While the format of the file needs to be streamable and recognizable by Windows Media Services, the actual content of this file is of little importance. It is the existence of the file that serves as a security measure to prevent unauthorized users from using Windows Media Load Simulator to launch a “denial of service” attack against your server. If WMLoad.asf is not present in your content directory, Windows Media Load Simulator will not run.

Caution

You must remove the WMLoad.asf file from the content directory once testing is complete and before putting the server into service.

You can create the WMLoad.asf file using Windows Media Encoder, or by renaming one of the existing ASF files in the WMPub\WMRoot folder to WMLoad.asf. To further protect your server during load simulation testing, associate an access control list (ACL) with the WMLoad.asf file. In this way, users attempting to run Windows Media Load Simulator would have to provide a user name and password before being allowed to proceed. (You must enable WMS Negotiate Authentication on your Windows Media server in order for this to work.)

To set access permissions for WMLoad.asf, follow these steps:

1. From Windows Explorer, navigate to the %systemdrive%\WMPub\WMRoot directory, or to the directory you specified as the default. This is the directory where WMLoad.asf should be.

2. Right-click WMLoad.asf, and then click Properties.

3. Click the Security tab, and then click Add.

4. Type the domain (if applicable) and user names of the people who will have access to WMLoad.asf.

5. Select each user that you have added and verify that read permissions are allowed. Read permissions should be granted by default.

6. Click OK.