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Test Execution Specialist Guide
This guide describes tasks that you must complete before you can configure and run tests in Rational® Test Automation Server. You can find information about configuring runs for the different test types that are supported. You can also find information about other tasks that you can perform on the Resource Monitoring Service, Virtualization, and Integrations with third-party applications. This guide is intended for testers or test execution specialists.
Resource monitoring
When you apply load to a system under test, the amount of resources consumed by your system is increasing. If the capacity of the resources does not match the load, you can see performance issues in the results. Resource monitoring in Rational® Test Automation Server helps you monitoring the resources of a system and establish the performance metrics and usage data of the system. Thus, you can observe the health of these resources while a schedule is running.
Resource monitoring capabilities
With Rational® Test Automation Server, you can monitor a host or a service that you add to a project as a source. You can select the statistics counters that are used to collect metrics and the resource usage data throughout the monitoring system. You can visualize metrics and data that are gathered during the monitoring process in Rational Test Automation Server.
Monitoring an Apache httpd server
To monitor an Apache httpd server, you must add the Apache httpd server source to Rational® Test Automation Server, enter connection settings and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.

Test Execution Specialist Guide
This guide describes tasks that you must complete before you can configure and run tests in Rational® Test Automation Server. You can find information about configuring runs for the different test types that are supported. You can also find information about other tasks that you can perform on the Resource Monitoring Service, Virtualization, and Integrations with third-party applications. This guide is intended for testers or test execution specialists.
- System modeling
  In this topic, you can find information about using the system model feature. You can also find the tasks that you can perform to create a system model. You must configure a repository to save the system model that you created for the application under test.
- Prerequisites to running tests
  Before you can run a test asset in a project on Rational® Test Automation Server, you must read the information about the different tests assets. You can add a remote static agent or Docker host to the project and then select it as an alternate location to run the test assets.
- Management of agents
  You can find information about managing the agents that you must install on remote computers and configure the agents to register with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. After the agents are registered, you can add them to your projects and then select them as locations to run tests.
- Management of Docker hosts
  You can find information about the tasks that you can perform on remote Docker hosts. After you set up a remote Docker host, you can register the Docker host with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. You must then add the registered remote Docker host to your project before you can run tests on the remote Docker host location.
- Test run configurations
  You can configure and run tests in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server after you add the test resources to your project in your team space.
- Management of running tests
  Find information about the tasks that you can perform on a test that you configured for a run either while it runs or after it completes the run.
- Management of virtualized services
  You can find information about the tasks that you can perform on and manage the virtualized services that run on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can start or stop the virtual services that are connected to Rational Test Automation Server. You can view the routing rules and usage statistics of virtualized services, agents, or intercepts that are connected to Rational Test Automation Server.
- Test results
  After the tests, Suites, or schedules are run and completed, you can view the results and open the reports in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to analyze the verdict, the performance, and statistics. You can also re-execute tests and schedules from the Result page with the same commit id.
- Resource monitoring
  When you apply load to a system under test, the amount of resources consumed by your system is increasing. If the capacity of the resources does not match the load, you can see performance issues in the results. Resource monitoring in Rational® Test Automation Server helps you monitoring the resources of a system and establish the performance metrics and usage data of the system. Thus, you can observe the health of these resources while a schedule is running.
  - Resource monitoring capabilities
    With Rational® Test Automation Server, you can monitor a host or a service that you add to a project as a source. You can select the statistics counters that are used to collect metrics and the resource usage data throughout the monitoring system. You can visualize metrics and data that are gathered during the monitoring process in Rational Test Automation Server.
    - Monitoring an NGINX server
      To monitor an NGINX server, you must add the NGINX server source to Rational® Test Automation Server, enter connection settings and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.
    - Monitoring an Apache httpd server
      To monitor an Apache httpd server, you must add the Apache httpd server source to Rational® Test Automation Server, enter connection settings and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.
    - Monitoring metrics collected by a Prometheus server
      You can monitor your system resources by using metrics data that are collected by a Prometheus server while executing a schedule.
    - Monitoring metrics exposed by an OpenMetrics exporter
      With Rational® Test Automation Server, you can monitor your system resources by using metrics data that are exposed by an OpenMetrics or a Prometheus exporter through metric counters while executing a schedule.
    - Monitoring a Java Virtual Machine
      To monitor a Java Virtual Machine, you must add the Java Virtual Machine source to the project in Rational® Test Automation Server and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring metrics.
    - Monitoring a Docker host
      To monitor a Docker host, you must add the Docker host source to Rational® Test Automation Server, enter connection settings and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.
    - Monitoring a Windows Performance host
      To monitor a Windows Performance host, you must add the Windows Performance host source to the project in Rational® Test Automation Server and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.
    - Monitoring a Linux Performance host
      To monitor a Linux Performance host, you must add the Linux Performance host source to the project in Rational® Test Automation Server and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.
  - Resource monitoring agents
    You can connect agents to IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server from other hosts to monitor a larger set of data collectors, computers, servers, or systems, or if a server to monitor requires authorization access. To monitor these remote servers, you must configure and run the agents so that a connection is set between IBM Rational Test Automation Server resource monitoring service and the agents.
  - Managing sources
    After you add and connect monitoring sources to your project, you might want to modify the sources in you project and the configuration of the sources.
  - Collecting and viewing resource monitoring usage data
    With Rational® Test Automation Server, you can collect resource monitoring data in a timeframe and view the resource monitoring usage data in a graph while the test is running. You can also create queries to retrieve the resource monitoring usage data.
- Configuration of a change management system
  When you use any application to create and track defects (bugs), issues, or other work items, you can configure the application as a change management system on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can then create defects (bugs), issues, or other work items without the need to open your application.
- Integrations with other applications
  You can integrate certain applications with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to run tests, view the test results, and create defects.
- Managing access to the server
  Desktop clients and third-party integrations use offline user tokens to connect to Rational® Test Automation Server.

Monitoring an Apache httpd server

To monitor an Apache httpd server, you must add the Apache httpd server source to Rational® Test Automation Server, enter connection settings and select the counters that are used to capture the monitoring usage data.

Before you begin

You must be logged in Rational® Test Automation Server and be the owner of an existing new project.

You can optionally use agents. See Resource monitoring agents.

Procedure

Click Infrastructure > Resource Monitoring.
The resource monitoring page opens. See Resource monitoring agents.
In the resource monitoring page, click Add a Source and select Add an Apache httpd server....
Fill in the following connection settings in the New server dialog:

Note: For hosts that are already connected to Rational® Test Automation Server through an agent, you have only the Access target from field enabled. Move directly to step 4.
1. In Target host, enter the IP address or host name and port number of the host where the server to monitor is installed.
2. In Server edition, select the appropriate server from the drop-down list.
3. In Path to the status page of the server, enter the name of the page to view the status of the server.
4. In Security, select the following options:
  
  Secured with TLS/SSL
  
  If the application server is secured with TLS/SSL.
  
  Trust self-signed certificate
  
  To accept the server certificate.
  
  Do not verify host name
  
  To ignore verification of the host name in the certificate.
  
  Require credentials
  
  If the server requires log-in credentials, enter a User name and Password.
Click Add.
The Choose Data Counters dialog opens.
Select and save the statistics counters to monitor the source. You can select them from the list where they follow the server logical organization.
For a faster selection, select the counters from the built-in sets drop-down list where they are organized by theme and save your selection.

Results

When the selected counters are saved, two tables are displayed in the resource monitoring main page. They contain the total number of sources you have added and the number of sources ordered by type.

What to do next

You can click the links in the tables to view the performance metrics and resource monitoring usage data for the monitored server.