QC 11 - the saga begins!

I learnt during recently that a new version of HP QualityCentre is available, Version 11 - check www.hp.com. Needless to say I downloaded the new version and set about preparing a new virtual server to install it on. Sounds simple enough, just fire one up and away we go.

Oh no no no, First I couldn't remember the administrator password for the virtual server I set up some months ago for some other new toy adventure! This resulted in deletion of the current machine and birth of a new one to take it's place. This was simple enough except I forgot the lesson that I should have learnt last time - note to self: A harddisk with 10 gig of storage is only enough to install the server OS (Win2008), nowhere near enough for HP ALM to be installed... Or SQL Server which I also found out part way through needed to be installed - doh. By this time I am becoming a big fan of virtualised servers and being able to just delete one, and create a new improved one in a matter of minutes.

Now onto server build three (3) and now we are looking like making some progress. Yahoo, we are past the disk space issue, only to smack into another brick wall - the database doesn't want to know about this ALM product: CONNECTION REFUSED! A quick google and I found out that by default the SQL server install doesn't enable 'Named Pipes' or 'TCP/IP', one of which is required for the ALM installer to connect to the database! Solved that problem with a few clicks of the mouse. I thought we must be close now, but no. The final error was that the service failed to start - I believe (not confirmed) that it was JBoss that couldn't find the 'java virtual machine' which stopped the whole process in it's tracks. Some more googling and using some of the faint memories from when I studied Java programming I managed to set the JAVA_HOME and Path variables to my freshly installed jre6 - restarted the services and hey presto Quality Centre 11 roared into life.

QC 11 has a tricked up user interface, which has a Java Swing feel to it, but I had to install a c++ security thingy when I installed the QC client on the workstation which has placed a small doubt in my mind - maybe it's a .Net web interface????

Here's a picture - what do you think?



So now I'm up and running, feeling somewhat proud of myself for managing to get the installation completed given my technical shortcomings. In the same way that my friends who are infrastructure engineers think that testing is repetitive and mind numbing, well after 3 server rebuilds, 2 SQL installs, 3 ALM and countless service restarts I think it might be a case of those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!