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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 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.
Starting a Java Virtual Machine
To monitor the sources from a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), you must first start the JVM. You must enter the IP address of the JVM, the IP port, and the security parameters in the command before running the Java Virtual Machine.

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.
  - 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.
    - Installing and running a Docker agent on a remote host
      You must install the resource monitoring Docker agents on the target host for which you want to monitor the resources and collect the metrics. You need to run an agent to establish a connection with Rational® Test Automation Server.
    - Installing and running a Java agent on a remote host
      You must install the resource monitoring java agent on the target host for which you want to monitor the resources and collect the metrics. You need to run the agent to establish a connection with Rational® Test Automation Server.
    - Starting a resource monitoring Java agent as a service on Windows
      To ensure that the resource monitoring Java agent starts by itself when the host is running, you can set up the environment in such a way that the resource monitoring agent can be started as a service.
    - Starting a resource monitoring Java agent as a service on Linux
      To ensure that the resource monitoring Java agent starts by itself when the host is restarted, you can set up the environment in such a way that the resource monitoring agent can be started as a service.
    - Starting a Java Virtual Machine
      To monitor the sources from a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), you must first start the JVM. You must enter the IP address of the JVM, the IP port, and the security parameters in the command before running the Java Virtual Machine.
  - 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.

Starting a Java Virtual Machine

To monitor the sources from a Java Virtual Machine (JVM), you must first start the JVM. You must enter the IP address of the JVM, the IP port, and the security parameters in the command before running the Java Virtual Machine.

Procedure

Enter The IP address of the JVM (local or remote host) and the IP port in the command that is used to run the Java Virtual Machine.
Optional: You can use the authentication security data to start the virtual machine. In this case, you must enter the name of the password file. You can also enter the name of an access file that might be needed if user privileges are required.

Example

Parameters used to launch a JVM without security:

java
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9010
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false 
-jar MyapplicationFile.jar

Parameters used to launch a JVM with authentication security:

java
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=9010
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.local.only=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=jmxremote.password
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=jmxremote.access (this command is optional)
-jar MyapplicationFile.jar