Prerequisites for installing the server software on Ubuntu

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

The following sections describe each prerequisite in detail:

Internet access

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

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.

Ubuntu Server

You must install an Ubuntu Server and have a working Domain Name Server (DNS) that resolves the host name into a machine-readable IP address.

For more information about specific versions of 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 of user data

If you want to upgrade the product from a previous version, then you must perform one of the following tasks based on the existing version of the server software:

  • Back up the data from V10.0.2, Fix Pack 1 or earlier. See Backing up the user data from a previous release.

  • Back up the data from V10.1.0 or later. See Backing up the server data on Ubuntu.
    Note: You must select the existing version of Rational® Test Automation Server from the drop-down list to view the procedure for backing up and restoring the user data for your version because the instructions differ for different versions.

Mandatory software

You must install the following mandatory software:

  • Helm V3.5.2. For more information, refer to the Helm documentation.
    Note: The Helm command must be in one of the directories in your PATH environment variable.

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

    Note: If you use ssh to log in to the computer, then you can skip this step because OpenSSH is already installed on your computer.

k3s environment

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

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, you must configure it appropriately. You can virtualize the bookinfo sample application. You must install this application in the Bookinfo namespace. For more information about the bookinfo application, refer to the Istio documentation.

For more information about how to enable service virtualization through Istio, see Setting up a Kubernetes environment (k3s) on Ubuntu.

Collection of usage metrics

If you want Rational® Test Automation Server to display the usage statistics of the virtual service instances, you must install the Prometheus server at the time of server installation.