Following are the basic steps for running Load Simulator.
To run Load Simulator
Verify that you have classified your users and set up the servers you want to test.
Install the Microsoft Exchange Client on the Windows NT Workstation computers or Windows NT Server computers you plan to use as the Load Simulator clients. (Note that Load Simulator only runs under Windows NT.)
Determine what the acceptable response time should be for your users. Usually, 1 second (1000 milliseconds) is a good criteria to use, but you may decide that 1.5 seconds (1500 milliseconds) is adequate.
Using Load Simulator, define your test topology and generate your user import files.
For each server you plan to test, use the Microsoft Exchange Server Administrator program to import those user definitions into your Microsoft Exchange Server directory.
Using Load Simulator, define the initial state of both your users and public folders.
Run the User Initialization and Public Folder Initialization tests against your server to populate the Microsoft Exchange Server information store.
Define a few tests with the user classifications that you have previously defined and run them against the server platforms. For example, you may decide you want to test 250 light users against a middle-defined server.
Each pass of Load Simulator tool runs for several hours and produces one number that is the 95-percent weighted average response time (in milliseconds) that each of the Load Simulator users experienced during that test. You can use several different user counts to generate several different data points and then graph the results.