Prerequisites for installing the server software on Red Hat OpenShift

You must complete certain tasks before you install Rational® Test Automation Server on the Red Hat OpenShift platform.

The following sections describe each prerequisite in detail:

Entitlement key

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

Red Hat OpenShift platform

You must set up the Red Hat OpenShift platform, and then install the following components in your IT infrastructure:

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform V4.5 or V4.6. For more information, refer to the Red Hat OpenShift V4.5 or Red Hat OpenShift V4.6 documentation.

  • Dynamic Volume Provisioning that supports ReadWriteOnce (RWO) and ReadWriteMany (RWX) access modes. For more information, refer to the Dynamic provisioning section in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

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

  • Optional: Red Hat Service Mesh V2.0, if Istio recording and service virtualization features are required. For more information, refer to the Installing Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh section in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

    For more information about the service virtualization feature, see Management of virtualized services.

  • Optional: You can configure the OpenShift software-defined networking (SDN) to provide a unified cluster network that enables the communication between pods across the OpenShift Container Platform cluster. The default installation process includes the NetworkPolicy resources and these resources are acted upon only if you configure the SDN appropriately. For more information, refer to the OpenShift SDN default CNI network provider section in the RedHat OpenShift documentation.

You must have access to the OpenShift cluster with cluster administrator privileges. You can run the following command on the OpenShift command-line interface to gain access:
oc login -u kubeadmin -p {password} https://api.{openshift-cluster-dns-name}:6443

For more information about specific versions of software requirements, see System Requirements.

Mandatory software

You must install the following software on Red Hat OpenShift:

  • Helm V3.5.2. For more information, refer to the Installing a Helm chart on an OpenShift Container Platform cluster section in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

  • OpenShift CLI. For more information, refer to the Getting started with the CLI section in the Red Hat OpenShift documentation.

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.

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}-postgresql-0 26 GB

ReadWriteOnce

CLI Abbreviation: RWO

 User data used by services
data-{my-rtas}-rabbitmq-0 8 GB RWO Notifications between services
data-{my-rtas}-results-0 8 GB RWO Reports
data-{my-rtas}-tam-0 32 GB RWO Cloned git repositories
data-{my-rtas}-userlibs-0 1 GB

ReadWriteMany

CLI Abbreviation: RWX

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

Service virtualization through Istio

Disclaimer: This release contains access to the Istio virtualized services feature in IBM® 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, 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.

To provide your feedback, you can send an email to devops24@us.ibm.com.

The default configuration does not enable service virtualization through Istio. To use the service virtualization feature through Istio, you must configure it appropriately. As a Tech Preview feature, you can virtualize the bookinfo sample application.

You must install the bookinfo application in the Bookinfo namespace because Rational® Test Automation Server supports service virtualization through Istio only for the bookinfo sample application.

For more information about the bookinfo application, refer to the Istio documentation.

Service virtualization usage metrics

You must perform the following tasks so that Rational® Test Automation Server shows the correct usage of service virtualization metrics: