Testing and Validation: Leveraging VMWare for Success

Testing and Validation:Leveraging VMWare for Success

Tim Antonowicz

Systems Engineer

Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College Testing, 2004

Testing was nearly nonexistentTired, Old servers kept in the basementNo standard installation baseNo management or oversight

Why Build a Testing Infrastructure?

Testing and Validation is not a requirement for successDuplicated EffortHigh Cost

Additional HardwareAdditional SoftwareRedundant InfrastructureStaff Time and Resources

Methodologies

SandboxesAreas for Developers to try new things

RedoLeverage VM change logs

Tiered approachCreate a Test-Stage-Production work flow

ClonesWork on production systems offline

Sandboxes

Playgrounds, POCLoose or no central controlVMware Workstation for developers

Desktops for client accessServers for application testingStandard services (SQL, IIS, Apache, MYSQL, etc.)Rollback changesClone new systems

ESX VMs for shared sandboxesShared services for workgroupsCollaborative work flow

Redo

Leverage the multiple disk states of VMs on ESX serverChange disk state prior to major upgradesSafety netRollback or append as neededChanges can be done via command lineDevelopers can maintain the systems themselves

Tiered Approach

Test, Stage, ProductionTesting- Developers have full access to system to script installStage- Developers and Systems work together from scriptProduction- Systems installs from script

Catch problems earlyEliminate “One-Offs”Separates developers from production environment

Clones

Take copy of production server offlineTroubleshootingBug fixesStress testing“What-ifs”

Offline EvaluationNo impact to productionProduction-type results

Bowdoin College Today

Bowdoin’s Testing environment is fully virtualized2/3 of all production servers have a test server1/3 have test and staging serversIT Developers fully onboard with the new system

Questions

Tim AntonowiczSystems EngineerBowdoin [email protected]

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