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Rational® Performance Tester
Administrator Guide
This guide describes how to install Rational® Performance Tester. After you install the product, you can perform administration tasks such as license configuration and integration with other products. This guide is intended for administrators.
Installation of Rational® Performance Tester
Installation of the product involves verifying requirements, planning, managing licenses, and configuring web-based help. This section lists all such topics.
Installation conventions and terminology
Understanding these terms and conventions can help you take full advantage of the installation information and your product.

Rational® Performance Tester
- Release Notes
  This document contains information about what's new, installation instructions, known issues in IBM® Rational® Performance Tester, and contact information of IBM Customer Support.
- System Requirements
  This document includes information about hardware and software requirements for IBM® Rational® Performance Tester.
- Getting Started
  This guide provides an overview and describes the task flows to get you to start with Rational® Performance Tester. This guide is intended for new users.
- Tutorials
  This section contains the tutorials which explains the main features of Rational® Performance Tester.
- Samples
  This section describes about the sample project which can be used with Rational® Performance Tester to test the functionality of an application.
- Administrator Guide
  This guide describes how to install Rational® Performance Tester. After you install the product, you can perform administration tasks such as license configuration and integration with other products. This guide is intended for administrators.
  - Installation of Rational® Performance Tester
    Installation of the product involves verifying requirements, planning, managing licenses, and configuring web-based help. This section lists all such topics.
    - Installation requirements
      Installation requires the correct hardware, software, server environment, operating systems, and user privileges for installing and running your software.
    - Installation conventions and terminology
      Understanding these terms and conventions can help you take full advantage of the installation information and your product.
    - Capacity Planning
      This document offers a methodology for assessing the CPU and memory characteristics of a given test and provides a set of best practices for scaling up to high volume loads using Rational® Performance Tester.
    - Installation Manager overview
      Installation Manager is a program for installing, updating, and modifying packages. It helps you to manage the applications or packages that it installs on your computer. Installation Manager also helps you to keep track of what you have installed, determine what is available for you to install, and to organize installation directories.
    - Installation locations
      Installation Manager retrieves product packages from specified repositories and installs the products into selected locations, which are referred to as package groups.
    - Offering coexistence considerations
      Some products are designed to coexist and share functions when they are installed in the same package group. A package group is a location where you can install one or more software product packages.
    - Eclipse instance overview
      The product package that you install using Installation Manager comes with a version of Eclipse, which is the base platform of this product package. If you already have Eclipse installed on your workstation, you can add your product package directly to that Eclipse installation and extend the functions of the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE).
    - Increasing the number of file handles on Linux™ workstations
      For best product performance, increase the number of file handles above the default setting of 1024 handles.
    - Starting the launchpad
      You can start the launchpad program to install the product.
    - Installation of the product by using IBM® Installation Manager
      The Setup disk includes the launchpad program, which provides you with a single location to start the installation process.You must download the product bits and then from the Installation Manager point to the Setup disk.
    - Uninstalling the product by using IBM® Installation Manager
      When you no longer require Rational® Performance Tester, you can use IBM® Installation Manager to uninstall Rational Performance Tester that you have installed.
  - License management
    Licensing for your installed IBM® software and customized packages is administered through the Manage Licenses wizard in the IBM Installation Manager. The Manage Licenses wizard displays license information for each installed package.
  - Product upgrade and migration
    When you want to use the enhanced functionalities of Rational® Performance Tester, you must upgrade to the latest version of the product software.
  - Configuration of the product
    You must configure Rational® Performance Tester when you want to run SAP tests, collect response time breakdown data, or use the product in the Docker container.
  - Integration with other products
    You can integrate IBM® Rational® Performance Tester with certain products to run tests, manage test assets, and create defects.
- Test Author Guide
  This guide describes how to create test scripts in Rational® Performance Tester and enhances tests by applying different test elements such as dataset, variables, and verification points. This guide is intended for testers.
- Test Execution Specialist Guide
  This guide describes tasks that you can perform on schedules, test execution with custom code, and Extending Rational® Performance Tester to support other protocols. This guide is intended for testers or test execution specialists.
- Test Manager Guide
  This guide describes how to keep track of the performance of the application by evaluating the test results. This guide is intended for test managers.
- Troubleshooting Guide
  This guide describes how to analyze and resolve some of the common problems that you might encounter while you work with Rational® Performance Tester.
- Reference Guide
  This guide describes, additional topics to gain more knowledge about Rational® Performance Tester.
- All Guides (PDFs)
  You can find the link to view or download the content of the release notes, system requirements, and persona guides of Rational® Performance Tester as a PDF file.
- Security Considerations
  You can take certain actions to ensure that your installation is secure, customize your security settings, and set up user access controls.
- Notices
  This document provides information about copyright, trademarks, terms and conditions for the product documentation.

Installation conventions and terminology

Understanding these terms and conventions can help you take full advantage of the installation information and your product.

The following conventions are used in this installation information:

The default installation directory is written as C:\installation_directory\product\inst.file.
The default log location for installation information is C:\log_file_dir\log.txt.

These terms are used in the installation topics.

Installation directory: The location of product artifacts after the package is installed.

Package: An installable unit of a software product. Software product packages are separately installable units that can operate independently from other packages of that software product.

Package group: A package group is a directory in which different product packages share resources with other packages in the same group. When you install a package using Installation Manager, you can create a new package group or install the packages into an existing package group. Eclipse-based packages installed in the same package group are able to use the shell-sharing features of Eclipse. Some packages cannot share a package group, in which case the option to use an existing package group is unavailable.

Repository: A storage area for installable software packages. A repository can be disc media, a folder on a local hard disk, or a server or web location.

Shared directory: In some instances, product packages can share resources. These resources are located in a directory that the packages share.