Managing many computers one project

[mfoster711]

We have 24 PC's that run TestExecute and perform most of our testing. These PCs all open and run a single TestComplete ProjectSuite that is stored on our shared network drive. 

Is this the "recommended way" to run tests on many PCs? Or, should we have an unique ProjectSuite for each PC?

I am asking this because we have difficulty dealing with Smartbear support at times. I feel like we are the only company running our tests this way and we encounter issues that nobody else seems to encounter.

[Marsha_R]

When I had multiple machines (not as many as you, but a few) running the same tests, we had TC installed on each machine and grabbed a copy of the tests from source control when the process started.  

[mfoster711]

We don't use a source control. I don't see the need in having one. Our source code doesn't change that often. 

We use a keywoard driven approach for testing. Our keyword tests actually live in Excel files. So the only things that frequently change for us are the keyword tests in Excel and the namemap in TestComlplete.

[Marsha_R · Accepted solution]

I would still put a copy of TC on each machine and then have the process bring over a current copy of the Excel sheet to run from locally.

[mfoster711]

How do you recommend doing that? Manually copying is not an option because it is too many PCs. I would use something like CopyProjectToSlave but that is no longer supported.

[Marsha_R]

Another way we did it was to have the process (we used Bamboo at the time) do a silent install of TC, then copy the tests over, then run them.