Agile Development and Test Environments

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Agile Development and Test Environments

• August 30, 2006

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Todays Topics

• Goals of the Test Environment
• Reality Check
• Technologies Available
• Applying These technologies
• to Testing Environments

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The Goals of the Test Environment

• We test to ensure ourselves that it will work as
  desired in production
• Testing infrastructure needs to provide a mirror
  of the production infrastructure
• Testing infrastructure also needs to facilitate
  our testing methods
• Regression Testing, Performance Testing
• Stress Testing, Unit Testing, Compatibility
  Testing
• Load Testing, Developers testing

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The Real World

• It can be very costly to mirror production
  environments
• It can be very time consuming to prepare test
  environments
• Controlling and refreshing Test environments is
  difficult
• The Devil is often in all of the details

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Infrastructure Technologies That Can Help

• Computer Virtualization
• Server / Workstation
• Storage Virtualization
• Software or Hardware based
• Pointer based
• Detailed Documentation
• Configuration Management

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Computer Virtualization Server/ Workstation

• Virtualization is a software layer that decouples
  the physical hardware from the operating system
• Virtual machines are encapsulated into files
• Virtualization was first introduced in the 1960s

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Computer Virtualization
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Computer Virtualization Advantages

• Partitioning
• Multiple application and operating systems can
  reside on one machine
• Isolation
• Complete isolation from the host computer
• Encapsulation
• The virtual machine is a file in the file system

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Storage Virtualization

• Pointer Based technologies
• Present a view of the production
• database
• They just keep track of writes
• Can be done with either hardware or software

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Storage Virtualization
Only the writes to the database are saved
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Storage Virtualization Advantages

• Save on disk space
• Quick refresh
• Ease of use

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Detailed Configuration Documentation Software

• Creates a blueprint of the configuration of
  hardware, operating systems and applications
• Creates a fingerprint or hash of each entity
• Change Isolation drill down
• Allows for a detail compare between collection
  points
• Isolates any differences
• Entity
• Or inside of the Entity

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Detailed Configuration
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Detailed Configuration
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Applying These Technologies to Our Test
Environments

• Compatibility testing
• Develop a library of different virtual machines,
  control sets
• Use your software control library to check in and
  check out the virtual machines
• Run the testing against the Virtual database
• All of this could be done on one machine
• If you run into real world compatibility issues
  compare your control machines to it

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Applying These Technologies to Our Test
Environments

• Developers testing
• Use a virtual machine to
• continuously compile your code
• Use a message agent like
• cruise control to notify you of problems

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Applying These Technologies to Our Test
Environments

• Performance testing
• Correlate the virtual environments performance
  to production environments performance
• Run your testing using virtual machines as drones
• Translate your results to production

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Applying These Technologies to Our Test
Environments

• Stress testing
• Change the configuration of the
• virtual machines resources

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Supporting Production - Bugs in the Real World

• It happens what should work is not working
• You can not duplicate the bug internally, it has
  to be the local environment
• Suggestions
• Use your detailed documentation tool and gather
  the details about the local environment
• Isolate the differences by comparing the local
  environment to your controlled environment
• For future testing, convert the the local
  environment into your controlled virtual
  environment

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Systems Compare High Level
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Systems Compare File Level
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Systems Compare Detail Level
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Fun Facts

• 90 of the top 100 software companies use
  Virtual Machines for testing
• Reduction in deployment time to days VS weeks
• Increased test environments CPU utilization from
  6-8 to 50-70
• Capital expenditures for test environments can be
  reduced by 80
• Space, cooling and power demands are also reduced

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Contact Information

• Nick Cellentani
• Cranel, Inc.
• ncellentani_at_cranel.com
• 614-318-4238 work
• Bill Warren
• Adexis
• wwaren_at_adexisstorage.com
• 614-318-4232