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Test Execution Specialist guide
This guide, which is intended for a tester or a test execution specialist, describes tasks that you must complete before you can configure and run tests on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can find information about other tasks that you can perform on the Resource Monitoring Service, Virtualization, and Integrations with third-party applications.
Prerequisites to running tests
Before you can configure and run a test in a project on Rational® Test Automation Server, you must read the information about the different tests. You might want to add a remote static agent or a remote Docker host to the project as an alternate location to run the tests.
Test run considerations for schedules
Before you configure a Rate Schedule or VU Schedule run, you must read the considerations you must take into account.

Test Execution Specialist guide
This guide, which is intended for a tester or a test execution specialist, describes tasks that you must complete before you can configure and run tests on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can find information about other tasks that you can perform on the Resource Monitoring Service, Virtualization, and Integrations with third-party applications.
- Prerequisites to running tests
  Before you can configure and run a test in a project on Rational® Test Automation Server, you must read the information about the different tests. You might want to add a remote static agent or a remote Docker host to the project as an alternate location to run the tests.
  - Test run considerations for AFT Suites
    Before you configure an AFT Suite run, you must read the considerations you must take into account.
  - Test run considerations for API Suites
    Before you configure an API Suite run, you must read the considerations you must take into account.
  - Test run considerations for schedules
    Before you configure a Rate Schedule or VU Schedule run, you must read the considerations you must take into account.
- Managing Docker hosts
  You can set up dedicated external Docker hosts to run large tests or run tests remotely to free up the dependency of running tests on the internal Docker host of IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server.
- Test run configurations
  You can configure and run tests in IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server after you add the test resources to your project.
- 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 and manage on the virtualized services that run on Rational® Test Automation Server. You can start or stop the stubs connected to Rational Test Automation Server. You can view the stub usage statistics and the routing rules configured for the stubs, agents, or proxies that are connected to Rational Test Automation Server.
- Test results
  After the tests or schedules are run and completed, you can view the results and 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 service
  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. The Resource Monitoring service in Rational® Test Automation Server helps you monitoring the resources of a system and establish the performance metrics of the system. Thus, you can observe the health of these resources while a schedule is running.
- Integrating with other applications
  You can integrate certain applications with IBM® Rational® Test Automation Server to run tests and view the test results.
- Managing access to the server
  Desktop clients and third-party integrations use offline user tokens to connect to Rational® Test Automation Server.

Test run considerations for schedules

Before you configure a Rate Schedule or VU Schedule run, you must read the considerations you must take into account.

Important information about JMeter tests in schedules

When you plan to run JMeter tests as part of the VU Schedule or Rate Schedule on Rational® Test Automation Server, you must have completed the following tasks:

Installed the IBM® Rational® Performance Tester Agent on a computer.
Installed the JMeter application on the computer where you have installed the IBM® Rational® Performance Tester Agent.
Set the environment variable JMETER_HOME that points to the JMeter installation directory.

For running a Rate Schedule or VU Schedule, see Configuring a run for Rate Schedules or VU Schedules.