Lab Resources Overview

The Lab Resources modules enable you to define, manage, and maintain the testing resources used for ALM server-side testing.

When using ALM without Lab Management, users must control tests from their local computer. This method of testing is called client-side execution. Lab Management enables users to run tests using server-side execution. Once testing hosts are set up, users can use ALM to schedule and execute tests on remote hosts without requiring user intervention. The Lab Management features enable you to set up and maintain the hosts and host pools used for test execution.

Testing hosts are used to run tests and to process the data collected from those tests. You can define hosts as Functional hosts or Performance hosts.

Functional and Performance hosts can have the following purposes:

Functional hosts (ALM Edition only)

  • Business Process Testing. A testing host on which business process tests are run.

  • QuickTest Professional. A testing host on which QuickTest Professional is run.

  • Service Test A testing host on which Service Test is run.

  • System Test. A testing host on which System Test is run.

  • UFT One. A testing host on which Unified Functional Testing is run.

  • VAPI-XP. A testing host on which VAPI-XP is run.

Note:

  • You must register a testing host with ALM to make it available for functional testing. See Using ALM Lab Service.

  • You can block functional testing hosts from being selected automatically.
  • You can reserve hosts for a specific user, so that other users cannot select the reserved hosts.
Performance hosts

  • Controller. A testing host used to manage a performance test. During a test run, the Controller issues instructions to the load generators, including which scripts to run, how many Vusers to run per script, and when to start and stop running them. There is only one Controller per test.

  • Load generator. A testing host on which Vusers run during a test. There can be many load generators for a given test.

  • Data processor. A testing host used for processing and publishing data gathered during a test run.

Note:

  • To provide greater flexibility (especially where resources are scarce), you can allocate a Performance host with dual purposes as a Controller and load generator. In general, this is not a recommended practice and is only appropriate for tests that have a very small number of Vusers. When allocating hosts, the system tries to use single function hosts before dual-purpose Controller and load generator hosts.

  • Although it is possible to set a host as both a Controller and a data processor, it is recommended to set up a separate host for data processing.

  • A host that is located over a firewall or is a UNIX host can be used as a load generator only.

The Testing Hosts/Hosts module is available in both the Lab Management and ALM projects.

For task details about managing testing hosts, see How to Manage Testing Hosts.

A host pool is a group of testing hosts. Each project has one host pool. When managing a host pool, it is important to understand the total available resources.

If you are using the pool for a project which involves performance testing, the pool must contain at least one Controller, one load generator, and one data processor. Because hosts can have dual functionality, it is recommended that a pool contains, among the other hosts, at least one host that can be dedicated fully for Controller functionality.

Available from: Lab Management only.

For task details about managing host pools, see How to Manage Host Pools.

A cloud account is a Lab Management version of an actual account with a cloud provider.

A cloud template is a set of details which represents a certain type of cloud host.

When running tests, or performing maintenance on host machines, the resources needed for these tasks must be available, and must fall within the project and license limits. The Timeslots module enables you to reserve resources in advance to ensure that the required resources are available when you are ready to perform these tasks.

There are two kinds of timeslots: testing timeslots and maintenance timeslots.

  • Reserving a testing timeslot ensures that the resources required for a functional or performance test are available when you need to run the test. You reserve testing timeslots only in your ALM project.

  • Reserving a maintenance timeslot ensures that the resources required for a maintenance task are available when the maintenance task is performed. You reserve maintenance timeslots in the Lab Management project.

For details about reserving timeslots, see How to Reserve Timeslots.