Installation considerations for Rational® Test Control Panel

You can install Rational® Test Control Panel as part of Rational® Test Workbench or Rational® Test Virtualization Server.

Consider the following information before you install Rational® Test Control Panel.

Hardware and software requirements

For a complete list of system requirements, see System Requirements.

For a list of hardware and software requirements for Rational® Test Control Panel, see Software Product Compatibility Reports.

Networking considerations

Note if Rational® Test Control Panel will be running in an IPv4 or IPv6 networking environment. The server Networking installation option is used to declare an IPv4 or IPv6 addressing preference.
Note: The Rational® Test Control Panel Networking installation option applies to Windows™ only.
Note: Accessing the Rational® Test Control Panel web UI by using an IPv6 literal address is not supported.

Security considerations

Starting from version 9.1.1 onwards, when you install Rational® Test Control Panel software, all communications with Rational® Test Control Panel are secure and by default use HTTPS on port 5443. You can change the port number after installation and also enable plain HTTP as required. For details, see Configuring the server HTTP Endpoint.

For security considerations for installing the software in detail, see Security considerations for Rational Test Control Panel.

Installation considerations for the HTTP/TCP proxy

Before you deploy the HTTP/TCP proxy, it is important to consider the following items:
  • Network segments.
  • The proximity of the HTTP/TCP proxy to client and server applications because all traffic goes from client applications to the proxy and then to the server applications.
  • Systems that use HTTPS are sometimes locked down to accept communications from a specific source only, which could force the location of the HTTP/TCP proxy to be the same as the client applications.

Before you uninstall the HTTP/TCP proxy, copy the registration.xml file (which contains the Rational® Test Control Panel location, HTTPS set up, and forwarding rules) so that these values can be reapplied after upgrading the proxy to the latest version. After you install server, upgrade the existing Rational® Test Control Panel JDBC driver installations by copying the new driver over the existing files.

Security model planning

Rational® Test Control Panel has a simple security model. The features available within server depend on the security model chosen during installation.

The following table describes the security model options.

Security Model Option Description
Active Directory Rational® Test Control Panel uses one or more Active Directory servers to authenticate the user name and password provided by each user. This process enables you to use your Windows™ domain user names to log in to Rational® Test Control Panel. However, Rational® Test Control Panel does not store or maintain any user name and password information itself.

For an Active Directory server, only the Security group type (groupType=-2147483643) is supported. To use other group types, you must treat the server as an LDAP server and set up the user and group filters to match the appropriate attributes.

You must create two Active Directory groups:

  • Rational® Test Control Panel "normal" users who are allowed to log in to Rational® Test Control Panel but have limited access.
  • Rational® Test Control Panel administrators.

Active Directory users must be put into these Active Directory groups and the names of these two groups must be specified in the fields provided on the Rational® Test Control Panel Security Configuration screen in the Rational® Test Control Panel installation program.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) This option is similar to the Active Directory security model option but it authenticates against a single LDAP server. However, the basic approach of having two groups defined for user and administrators is the same.

Even when you are using an LDAP URL as an Active Directory server, you must select "Active Directory" as the LDAP provider in the LDAP list box, and then, specify the host name or IP address and port number of the LDAP server to use.
Rational® Test Control Panel Built-in User names and passwords are managed by the Rational® Test Control Panel and each user must enter a user name and password to log in. Thus, only authenticated users can control the Rational® Test Virtualization Server environment.

In addition, users who are identified as administrators can create other users. However, you must enter a user name and password for the first user, who will be created as an administrator. After Rational® Test Control Panel is installed, you can log in as the administrator and create additional users.

None There is no user authentication. Users are not required to log in (by using a user name and password), which means that anyone who knows the Rational® Test Control Panel URL can control, say, the Service Virtualization environment.

Before installing Rational® Test Control Panel, it is important to consider whether and how you want Rational® Test Control Panel to authenticate users:

  • To use either Active Directory or LDAP, you need the assistance of an Active Directory or LDAP administrator.
  • If your organization does not have any Active Directory or LDAP servers or if you are unsure about the configuration details of any such servers in your organization, you can use the Rational® Test Control Panel Built-in authentication-type.

Working with Rational® Test Control Panel workspace

The workspace is the directory where Rational® Test Control Panel stores its data (for example, published stubs), which is separate from the installation directory.

The workspace contains the following databases that store data:
  • db.mv stores data about domains, environments, scenarios, or stubs.
  • sch_db.mv stores data about scheduled tests or Suites.
  • kairosdb.mv stores data about metrics collated by the KairosDB.
Note: You can find the data about the projects that contain published stubs in the repository sub folder for each of the domains to which the stubs were published.

The Rational® Test Control Panel workspace contains numerous files that represent the overall configuration and the current state of Rational® Test Control Panel along with data stored in the databases.

To prevent loss of data from the workspace, you must ensure that you set up a suitable backup strategy and periodically back up the workspace.
Remember: You must stop Rational® Test Control Panel and wait until all processes are stopped before you can backup the workspace.

Rolling back of Rational® Test Control Panel

When you want to roll back from Rational® Test Control Panel 10.2.2 or earlier to a previous version by using IBM® Installation Manager, you must have used Installation Manager to upgrade from an earlier version to a later version up to 10.2.2. The files of the earlier version must be available so that Installation Manager can access them for the roll back operation. Because Installation Manager supports rolling back the Rational® Test Control Panel installation directory, but not the workspace directory, hence, you must manually roll back the workspace while rolling back the installation.
Note: When you roll back a Rational® Test Control Panel version, the workspace cannot be reused and must be reinstalled.
Before you upgrade Rational® Test Control Panel 10.2.2 or an earlier version to 10.2.3 or later, by using Installation Manager, you must take a back up of the workspace if you want to roll back to the earlier version and reuse the workspace of the earlier version. Because when you upgrade Rational® Test Control Panel 10.2.2 or an earlier version to 10.2.3 or later, by using Installation Manager and select the workspace, the data contained in the workspace is automatically migrated to be supported in 10.2.3 or later. The migration of the workspace to 10.2.3 or later, renders it incompatible with 10.2.2 or an earlier version.
Restriction: You cannot use Installation Manager to roll back from 10.2.3 or later to 10.2.2 or an earlier version. Also, if the workspace was migrated by Installation Manager during the upgrade, you cannot reuse the migrated workspace with your earlier version of Rational® Test Control Panel.

Reusing the workspace

To determine the workspace location, open the container.server.properties file that is available in Rational® Test Control Panel installation directory\usr\servers\defaultServer\apps\RTCP.war\WEB-INF\classes directory. Look for the line that contains the workingDirectory key. For example:
  • On Windows, workingDirectory=C:\IBM\RTCP-Workspace
  • Non-Windows, workingDirectory=/var/rtcp
Note: If you delete the workspace during the uninstallation of Rational® Test Control Panel (by selecting the Delete Workspace option) in the Installation Manager, all the published test reports are deleted as well.
Before you upgrade or uninstall an older version to move to a newer version (when the upgrade is not applicable), perform the following tasks:
To preserve the workspace (published stubs, user configuration, domains, and environments) of Rational® Test Control Panel 10.2.2 or an earlier version when you uninstall the previous version, ensure that you do not select the option to remove the workspace. When you install the later version up to 10.2.2, ensure that the workspace directory is set to the same location as your existing workspace.
Note: Starting from 9.2.1 onwards, the Rational® Test Control Panel Environments page and the Agents page were replaced by dashboards. Those dashboards model stubs and scenarios differently and use new REST APIs, so existing test automation scripts that use the REST APIs before 9.2.1 operate differently.

After the upgrade or uninstallation, the contents of the workspace directory might change to work with the newer version of Rational® Test Control Panel.

The uninstallation of Rational® Test Control Panel version 8.5 and later specifies the location of the workspace directory. Make note of this directory. For versions earlier than 8.5, the uninstaller does not provide this information.

For more information about moving the Rational® Test Control Panel workspace, see the technote.

Configuring the X-Frame-Options HTTP response header

To help prevent possible clickjacking attacks, configure an X-Frame-Options HTTP header to be sent in the responses by performing the following steps:
  1. Stop Rational® Test Control Panel, if running.
  2. Go to Rational® Test Control Panel installation directory\usr\servers\defaultServer\apps\RTCP.war\WEB-INF\classes.
  3. Open the container.server.properties file and add a property named container.xFrameOptions. The value of this property is sent as the X-Frame-Options header value in the responses for web pages. For example container.xFrameOptions=SAMEORIGIN. If you do not add the property or specify no value for it, no header is sent.
  4. Open the oslc.server.properties file and add a property named oslc.xFrameOptions. The value of this property is sent as the X-Frame-Options header value in OSLC content responses. For example oslc.xFrameOptions=SAMEORIGIN. If you do not add the property or specify no value for it, no header is sent.
  5. Save the changes.
  6. Restart Rational® Test Control Panel.