Prerequisites for installing the server software on Ubuntu

Before you install Rational® Test Automation Server on the Ubuntu platform, you must first complete certain tasks.

The following section describes each prerequisite in detail:

Internet access

You must have access to the internet to install Rational® Test Automation Server.

Entitlement key

You must copy an Entitlement key from Container software library to pull the images used by the server software. For more information, refer to Creating an API key.

Ubuntu server

You must set up an Ubuntu server.

For more information about hardware and software requirements, see System Requirements.

Note: Depending on your testing workload, Rational® Test Automation Server might require more resources. You must use the entire disk space and set up Logical Volume Manager (LVM) by using the ext4 file system. If your organization requires application data to be stored in a separate partition, then you can create a mount point at /var/lib/rancher/k3s/storage/ with at least 128 GB capacity.

Backup user data

If you want to migrate user data from a previous version of the product during the installation of the server software, then you must perform the following tasks:

Mandatory software

You must install the following mandatory software:

  • Helm V3.3.4 or later. For more information, refer to the Installing Helm section in the Helm documentation.

    Note: You must ensure that you have access to the Kubernetes cluster with required privileges before installing Helm. You can contact your cluster administrator to gain access to the cluster. For more information, refer to the Accessing Clusters section in the Kubernetes documentation.

  • OpenSSH Server. For more information, refer to the Installation section in the OpenSSH Server documentation.

Optional software

You can install the following optional software:

  • Jaeger operator to trace test logs and Jaeger-based reports when you run tests. For more information, refer to the Jaeger operator documentation.

  • Prometheus server to monitor your system resources by using metrics data that are collected by a Prometheus server. For more information, refer to the Installation section in the Prometheus documentation.

Tip: Alternatively, you can also install Jaeger and Prometheus server as part of the k3s environment setup. See Setting up a Kubernetes environment on Ubuntu.

Non-root user

You can use the sudo command to execute a single command as the root user when needed. If you do not want to enter a password each time when you run the sudo command, you can enable the passwordless sudo environment by performing the following steps:

  1. Run the sudo visudo command to modify the sudo settings.

  2. Locate the %sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL and modify it to %sudo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL in the file.

  3. Save your changes, and then close the editor.

k3s environment

You must set up the k3s Kubernetes environment along with other optional configurations such as firewall, Jaeger, and Prometheus server. See Setting up a Kubernetes environment on Ubuntu.

Persistent storage

Rational® Test Automation Server requires persistent storage in addition to the minimum resources required by the cluster. Depending on the workload, you might require additional persistent storage.

You can set the pod securityContext.fsGroup for each of the following PersistentVolume by using Helm parameters if your PersistentVolume provisioner requires securityContext.fsGroup. The default configuration creates the PersistentVolumeClaim that dynamically provision the PersistentVolume. The following table lists the PersistentVolumeClaim, its size, and access mode during the configuration:

PersistentVolumeClaim Size Access Mode Content
data-{my-rtas}-datasets-postgresql-0 2 GB

ReadWriteOnce

CLI Abbreviation: RWO

 Edits to Datasets
data-{my-rtas}-execution-postgresql-0 2 GB RWO Infrastructure details
data-{my-rtas}-gateway-postgresql-0 2 GB RWO Project details
data-{my-rtas}-rabbitmq-0 8 GB RWO Notifications between services
data-{my-rtas}-keycloak-postgresql-0 2 GB RWO Users and resource ownership
data-{my-rtas}-results-0 8 GB RWO Reports
data-{my-rtas}-results-postgresql-0 2 GB RWO Execution result metadata
data-{my-rtas}-rm-postgresql-0 2 GB RWO Source details
data-{my-rtas}-tam-0 32 GB RWO Cloned git repositories
data-{my-rtas}-tam-postgresql-0 8 GB RWO Test asset metadata
data-{my-rtas}-userlibs-0 1 GB

ReadWriteMany

CLI Abbreviation: RWX

 User provided third party libraries
Note: {my-rtas} is the release name that you provide during the installation of the server software.

Service virtualization through Istio

The default configuration does not enable service virtualization through Istio. To use the service virtualization feature, you must configure it appropriately and it must be installed by a cluster-admin. For more information about how to enable service virtualization through Istio, see Installing the server software on Ubuntu by using k3s.
Disclaimer: This release contains access to the virtualized services feature in Rational® Test Automation Server as a Tech Preview. The Tech Preview is intended for you to view the capabilities of virtualized services offered by Rational® Test Automation Server V10.1.2, and to provide your feedback to the product team. You are permitted to use the information only for evaluation purposes and not for use in a production environment. IBM provides the information without obligation of support and "as is" without warranty of any kind.