Micro Focus Quality Center Installation Guide – Learn QC (Day 2)

HP ALM/QC is now changed to Micro Focus ALM/QC but still, the content on the page is valid on the new Micro Focus domain and tools as well.

After we published Quality Center tutorial 1, we figured it would help our readers immensely if we add an article that elaborates the download and installation procedure for ALM/QC 11.52. After all, you will enjoy these tutorials to the fullest if you can install and practice Quality Center Software at your home or office system. So we have introduced one more installation guide tutorial in our original 4 tutorial series.

HP ALM/QC installation is a little bit tricky, but this comprehensive installation guide makes it super easy with exact steps and screenshots you need to follow in order to install and start using HP Quality Center test management software on your machine.

Let’s get started.

HP ALM/QC Installation Steps:

Step #1: Download: The first step is to download latest HP Quality Center/ALM software (HP ALM 11.52).

To do so, please use the following link: Download Micro Focus ALM Free Trial

In this page, use the “Trials and Demos” drop-down and choose “HP ALM 11.5 English SW E-media Evaluation”.

(Click on images to enlarge)

If you have not registered with HP, do so quickly and when the following screen appears to choose the version you need depending on the OS you have.  I will choose the first one.

Note:  The set of instructions in this article are going to be for a windows machine.

Click Download.

Software_HP_QC_ALM_11.50_Windows_English_T7333-15018 is the file that gets downloaded. It’s a 2.5 GB file and it takes approximately 2 hours to download (also depends on your network speed).

Tip: I have had more success downloading this file by using the HP Download manager. Otherwise most of the times, the file shows that it is downloading but nothing really happens. So I recommend going to your email (that you provided while registration) that you will receive when you enter all the information during registration and follow the link provided in there. Then in the following screen, you will see the option “Use HP Download Manager”. The best thing about this is, in case the download stops for any reason, you can always resume it from where it stopped.

Tip: If for any reason you have had an error while you were downloading the file, abort the process and restart.

Step #2: Extracting the files from the downloaded ISO file

For some reason when I tried to extract the downloaded file using my regular WinZip app it did not work. I used 7-zip File Manager for it. Try this link for more information.

Again, if you encounter any errors, abort the process and restart.

This is how the files get extracted:

Step #3: The next step might feel like a chore, after all, you are just one step away from the installation, but this is the most important: Please read the Installation Guide.

You can find it in the “Docs” folder of your extracted folder structure.

Step #4: ALM relies on client-server based architecture.  You will also need a supported Database server installed on your machine before you go ahead with this process. The following are the requirements. You can also find the same in the “Read me” folder of your downloaded files.

Server requirements to Install HP ALM/QC

ALM Server Hardware Requirements

The following table includes hardware requirements for installing ALM on a server machine.

Recommended ALM Server Configurations

The following table includes recommended configurations for each operating system.

Supported ALM Server Configurations

Client Requirements:

Tip: As you can see from the above list of requirements, having a separate server machine makes more sense. If you are trying to make one machine work as both client and server you might have to use some sort of virtual machine software like Microsoft Windows Virtual PC.

Running the installation

Step #1: Run the setup.exe.  Choose “ALM Platform (Windows OS) link from the below window:

Step #2: Agree to the terms and conditions:

Step #3: Accept the default customer info or enter new info if you wish:

Step #4: Choose folder. I chose the defaults:

Step #5: Confirm installation.

Step #6: Installation begins.

Step #7: Once the installation is complete the installation complete screen appears.

Click Finish, to being the server set up.  The server configuration wizard opens up if your machine meets the server requirements that we discussed in the above section.

Server Configuration

Step #1: The welcome screen will be displayed first and on clicking Next the following screen appears. Click Next

Step #2: Enter the DB info and click Next

Step #3: Accept the defaults in the site admin page and click Next

Step #4: Enter the security info:

Step #5: Create site admin user credentials

Step #6: Enter repository path

Step #7: App server details:

Step #8: Enter the username and password of the user as whom you would want to run the ALM server as. Choose the user who is the admin for the machine.

Step #9: Check the install mercury tools checkbox ON to install the demo project.

Step #10: Enter the mail server details or choose “None” if you do not wish to do so. This is to automatically send emails from QC.

Step #11: Once all the steps are done, you will be displayed the summary of all the information you entered and when you confirm it the configuration is set up.  The Finish page opens up:

At the end of this installation, the server is started and you can now start using ALM from a web browser by launching the client.

Starting an ALM client:

1) In your Web Browser type the address HTTP://<ALM Platform Server Name>[<:Port number>]/qcbin – The application server name and the port number are what you have selected in the “Application server” part of the server configuration process.

2) An example URL is something like http://testqc.com:8800/qcbin

3) Choose “Application Lifecycle Management” and you are all set to start!

In conclusion:

We have detailed all the steps and provided you with all the resources that will help make your HP ALM/QC installation process easy.

In next tutorial, we will see how to manage requirements and release cycles using ALM.

Do share your success or failure below in the comments.