A Year of “Testing” the Cloud for Development and Test
- 1. BW3 Concurrent Session 11/13/2013 10:15 AM "A Year of "Testing" the Cloud for Development and Test" Presented by: Jim Trentadue New York Life Brought to you by: 340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073 888 268 8770 904 278 0524 sqeinfo@sqe.com www.sqe.com
- 2. Jim Trentadue New York Life Jim Trentadue has more than fourteen years of experience as a coordinator/manager in the software testing field. Jim’s various roles in testing have focused on test execution, automation, management, environment management, standards deployment, and test tool implementation. In the area of offshore testing, he has worked with multiple large firms on developing and coordinating cohesive relationships. As a speaker, Jim has presented at numerous industry conferences, chapter meetings, and at the University of South Florida's software testing class, where he mentors students on the testing industry and discusses trends for establishing future job searches and continued training.
- 3. A Year of Testing in the Cloud: Lessons Learned Jim Trentadue Jim_Trentadue@hotmail.com November 13th, 2013
- 4. What is the ‘Cloud’? Defining the terminology behind the Cloud and listing its components “Cloud” is a new consumption and delivery model inspired by consumer Internet services. Enabled by Virtualization, (Service) Automation, Standardization Cloud enables: ! Self-service ! Sourcing options ! Economies-of-scale Multiple Types of Clouds will co-exist: ! Private, Public and Hybrid ! Workload and / or Programming Model Specific Cloud Services Cloud Computing Model
- 6. Regular stats and environment reports Leveraging an automated Cloud Management solution enables the following Managing Cloud Services Deploying Cloud Services Secure User Centric SelfService Portal, Automation Engine and Catalog Automated Provisioning and Image Management Monitoring and Metering
- 7. Overview for a ‘Cloud’ test environment A high-level overview of the constructs of the new virtual test configuration 1) Image Library 2) Software Stack 3) Server Specifications Operating System Software components Hardware requirements • Red Hat Linux 5.3 • Oracle 10g • Number of CPU Processors • Red Hat Linux 5.3Oracle 10gR2 • Oracle 10g R2 • Amount of memory • Windows 2003 server • Oracle 11g • Storage size (through SAN) • Windows 2008 server – 32bit • SQL Server 2008 • Windows 2008 server – 32bit SQL Server 2008 • JBOSS v (plus potentially component) • Windows 2008 server – 32bit Application " Verify your OS is supported by the Cloud provider " Must be available via a silent install method " This can be a standard amount or can be custom on demand
- 8. Benefits of a virtual test environment – why move from physical? Compare and contrast of the two different environment structures is done below Physical environment ! structure Virtual environment structure (Cloud) Key attributes Key attributes • Significant monetary investment upfront • Blade technology that can be flexible for the various layers (Application, Middle-Tier, Database) • Fixed CPU Processor, Memory, and Storage • Support costs are charged by the server • Maintenance would need to occur on each of the servers for O/S or software upgrades • Concept of storing one master image library based on O/S, adding in software stack, then request for Processor, Memory and Storage requested • Support costs are centralized, especially for licensing, patches and upgrades
- 9. Why Development and Test Clouds? High costs and poor utilization of non-production environments creates the need to consider alternatives ● Very low utilization of development and test servers—usually less than 15% ● Having to dedicate a substantial number of servers within a typical IT environment to test – sometimes 50% or more ● Finding instant access to available IT infrastructure resources (tools and platform) to perform tests ● Provisioning of new environments is a manual process that can take up to 6 weeks or more ● Very long testing backlogs, usually the single largest factor in the delay of new application deployments ● Test environments are often seen as expensive and providing little real business value ● Inability to follow best practices due to expense of additional IT resources required. ● High risk of defects caused by wrongly configured test environments
- 10. New opportunities for testing Implementation of a Cloud computing model can open other test avenues " UAT End User Training environment " Functional Test Automation environment " Performance Test Automation environment " Multiple System Test environments if needed " Prototype environment for Architects Business Analysts Technical Leads " Pre-production Staging environment for deployment tests " Production Support environment for immediate break fixes " Release-1 environment for a specified duration " IT User Training environment for new associates to the application " Upgraded environment for OS or vendor patch level upgrades
- 11. Investment in the test environment build Building a business case for a test environment project with the right-level of support Business Case Risk Return on investment Need to increase the number of test environments to align with parallel project initiatives Reliability testing of developed code is often compromised with multiple versions of a same module. Need to limit the rights to which users have privileges across the various environments Often there are times when random associates (IT or Business), may have access to a particular region, manipulating critical data for a series of tests. Investment in a source code repository. Need to have a DBA Service Level Agreement agreed upon and adhered to The ability to refresh the data and monitor the performance of an environment on a regular basis is critical. Manipulated test data and a long running query may skew results if inadequate measures are in place. Increased reliability and sustainability of projects, thus expediting timelines and deployments. Environment-related defects should decrease and application bugs found are worked sooner. Need to review the buy vs. build concept for procuring, or running as a service If called upon to procure new hardware for a new request of an additional environment capital, maintenance and support costs will continually be present. Additionally, the risk is high is if one particular server crashes. Investigate opportunities for a virtual environment or Cloud computing model to avoid repeatedly purchasing servers, storage, processors, memory and support. Additionally, project schedules are often at risk with defects opened due to environment issues. Investment in additional hardware or virtualization technology. Leveraging a well-suited server can help streamline additional RDBMS license costs by storing multiple environments on one server. Limiting the capability of who has access to environments further in migration cycles (Dev, Test, Prod).
- 12. Scope of initial environment setup Below is the list of the type of applications scoped for virtualization of a test environment Started with seven applications in scope with the following test environment needs 1 new application with no non-production environments built yet 3 existing applications with faltering physical test environments 2 existing applications with additional test environment needs apart from the physical servers 1 existing application looking to leverage a virtual test environment instead of a physical landscape
- 13. Initial landscape after setup The first build out of the environment looked like the following: Started with seven applications in scope with the following test environment needs 1 new application with no non-production environments built yet 24 servers built 3 existing applications with faltering physical test environments 9 servers built 2 existing applications with additional test environment needs apart from the physical servers 6 servers built 1 existing application looking to leverage a virtual test environment instead of a physical landscape 1 server evaluation
- 14. Cloud test environment start-up challenges A list of items that needs to be verified before the first server build out # Network ports, connectivity, IP subnets, etc. # Data refresh strategy laid out as far as personnel supporting this # Full blade server outages for patches, upgrades, etc., need a thorough checklist to ensure coverage # Patches either replicated or not across existing servers, not just on the image # User access tests to all necessary servers
- 15. If it could be done over again, what would be done different?
- 16. Requirements following the Cloud infrastructure implementation Some items to have advance planning on prior to creating the first virtual server With hindsight being 20-20, these items are must have to start again Full list of all costs associated with the Cloud Understand ALL of the costs like: • Cost for server uptime • Cost for support for the environment with various infrastructure groups • Cost of creating images, creating servers Pay-as –you need usage model Outline the costs for your customers: • Shared cost for application teams using servers • Shared cost for creating images • Run rate cost for continued server maintenance Governance model established Ensure there are rules of engagement for usage: • If additional storage, CPU and Memory is required, there should be a nominal charge • If the servers have been idle for a defined period of time, they are subject for deactivation SLA defined for Cloud support Understanding this is a non-production environment: • Should there be any infrastructure issues, define an SLA knowing respective to the event and impact
- 17. Session recap Recapping lessons learned after the first year of Cloud implementation $ Before recommending, make sure you understand the Cloud infrastructure components and how it would be deployed and managed in your environment $ Build a strong business case for investment with industry stats on test environment usage; expanding on improving what you have and venturing into new areas for opportunities $ Outline the scope and landscape for an initial rollout, based on a risk-adverse method $ Research and study what others have had as start-up challenges, to try and avoid these pitfalls when starting $ Host a lessons learned immediately following the initial scope and landscape with the groups using the environment to establish best practices for usage
- 18. QUESTIONS?