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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.

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 performance agents that you install on remote computers and then configure the remote 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.
- Management of remote Kubernetes clusters
  You can find information about the tasks that you can perform on remote Kubernetes clusters. After you set up a remote Kubernetes cluster, you can register the external cluster with a team space on IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server. You must then add the remote cluster to a project before you run test assets or resources on the remote Kubernetes cluster.
- 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.
- Configuration of a scan of an application code
  You can use Rational® Test Automation Server to scan your application code for security vulnerabilities similar to using the HCL AppScan CodeSweep plugin to scan code in Visual Studio.
- 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.
- Working with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server REST services
  When you want to use the IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server REST APIs in your test automation scripts, you can view the REST APIs that are exposed by IBM Rational Test Automation Server. You can also run the APIs from within your project in IBM 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.

Requirements:

To connect resource monitoring agents to IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server in a team space, you must be a Team Space Owner. Any other team space Member (not owner) can only view the resource monitoring agents.
To connect resource monitoring agents to IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server in a project, you must be a project Owner. Any project Member (not the owner) can only view the resource monitoring agents.
Agent-based monitoring is mandatory to collect data from a Windows or Linux Performance host or from a Docker host.

For testing, you might need many hosts. For example, you might have one host with the application server, another host with the database server, and some hosts to apply the user load. Due to network or firewall issues, sometimes, it becomes difficult for multiple hosts to connect to each other. Resource monitoring agents are installed on the target hosts so that they can establish a connection with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to gather resource statistics of the target host.

The agents always try to connect with the server through the HTTPS protocol. You must install the agent and start it. From the resource monitoring page in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server, you can copy the command lines to download files and run the agents. When you stop the agent, the monitoring sources that you have already added persist but the live data will not be available.

You can configure your resource monitoring agent as a service so that the agent automatically runs when the host is restarted. For details, see the documentation pages about starting resource monitoring agents on Windows or Linux.

When the agent is connected to IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server, it is added to the main page of the resource monitoring service. Then, you can select the agent in the list of target sources in the dialog Access target from in the dialog box that opens from Add a Source.

view of total and type of sources, agents added to a project