Visual Round Trip Analyzer (VRTA)
is a tool that helps the SharePoint Administrator identify what is
being downloaded at a web page level. One of the biggest complaints from
users is the response time. This feedback always finds its way back to
the administrator of the SharePoint farm.
VRTA excels in showing the network round trip
relationship between the client and the server. This is also critical to
the well-being of a farm. While an administrator can optimize the
server response, there are several other parties that can inadvertently
be working against this:
Web developers: These folks create the HTML, CSS, and stylesheets.
End users: They load content such as images, which directly hampers performance.
Application developers: These folks load JavaScript, jQuery, and now have the client object model at their disposal.
All of these listed parties create solutions using
SharePoint Designer, Notepad, and possibly Visual Studio, and the
administrator would have no knowledge of this. But in the end, the
administrator is the person who will get the support call.
Using VRTA, the administrator can identify the bottlenecks and involve the right parties.
This recipe shows how to run VRTA against SharePoint 2010.
Getting ready
You must have VRTA loaded on a PC (free download from
the Microsoft Download Center). Netmon 3.4, also a free download, needs
to be loaded on the PC. These tools should not be run on servers but on
local machines. No special permissions are needed and it can be run
against a public site.
How to do it...
Select Start | Microsoft Visual Round Trip Analyzer.
In the drop-down next to Select Network, ensure that the proper network is selected.
Open the browser and set the address to about:blank.
Click the green play button on VRTA.
Navigate to the menu item.
In VRTA, click the red circle.
Click the All Files tab in VRTA. You should get a screen similar to the next screenshot:
How it works...
VRTA uses Microsoft Network Monitor 3.4 packet
analyzer as its foundation. Visually, it shows files and packets, along
with the round trip information that occurs between a client and server.
When evaluating page loads, several factors should be taken into account:
Using the four tabs, Main Chart, Statistics, All
Files, and Analysis, the data the page is retrieving and loading can be
seen in detail. In the preceding screenshot, every file that is loaded
shows how long to load, the port, the type of file, a status code, and
size.
Armed with this information, the administrator can
observe the assets that are being used and be able to offer
recommendations such as creating a sprite instead of loading each
individual image, or combining JavaScript files. Hovering over each
detail item will present further detail on the individual asset.
VRTA also has an Analysis tab that acts as a best
practice guide. It grades the files and page on several basic factors
such as an average file size rule, white spaces rule, and image
clustering rule. Using a color-coded scheme, it makes recommendations to
help you improve performance.
Finally, every time a recording is made, it is saved
in a directory by default, whose path can be seen in the title of the
VRTA application.
There's more...
The reason to start with about:blank is that
IE will reload the page automatically and won't use cache. This will
give you a real representation of your SharePoint 2010 application.
