【摘抄】Seven Tips on Virtual Test-Lab Automation

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Seven Tips on Virtual Test-Lab Automation 
v6lf7r:R%l;R0By Edward J. Correia 
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September 16, 2008 — Last week I brought you 10 concepts for building successful automation scrīpts. This week, I’ve got seven automation ideas, with guidance on design and operation of a virtual test lab.
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&JZ%yWzW J0As software complexity continues to increase, you and your test lab staff will have to handle more of the load from software engineering and development departments, not to mention needing additional support and training. Virtualization has certainly helped testers do more with less, but efficiency and time gains can be quickly offset. The answer might lie in your ability to automate your virtual testing, and 20-year development veteran Ravi Gururaj is here to tell us how.
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Host capacity management51Testing软件测试网'D#wG%_n
With Microsoft launching Hyper-V bundled with Windows Server, VMware giving away ESX for free and others entering the market, Gururaj sees hypervisors soon reaching commodity status. And with the ability of modern hardware to run dozens of virtual machines on a single host, management quickly becomes an issue. "On average, for machine capabilities today, you should be able to plan for around 10 virtual machines on a single host," he says. "Based on your lab machine requirements, you can plan for an appropriate number of physical hosts, and server virtualization will ensure that the physical host utilization is maximized."
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Storage utilization
z]P;Gni8Sm(N0As you plan for lab storage capacity, remember that certain products offer a "linked-clones" capability to optimize storage capacity. "Linked clones build a chain of VMs, maintaining only the differentials between images instead of storing the entire image," Gururaj explains. "In addition, the lab architecture should share a single storage [system] with multiple hosts. In this manner, your users will continue to have access to the storage even in case of unplanned downtime on one of the hosts."51Testing软件测试网O Tw0N~rA9h1G{-V
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Research product integrations51Testing软件测试网 ?Y4zD%BMoHo X-]
Automation solutions available today integrate with source control and test and build tools. Be sure to select one that works with your existing software infrastructure. "These tools can be integrated along with the central lab management system … [to] provide the power of each of these tools while maximizing the utilization of the virtual server farm in the lab." Better still are products with an open API. "This can be used for further customizations and enhancements. As you design the lab, you should keep these integration capabilities in mind, and leverage the appropriate ones for your development and test engineering community."
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Automate
S^2cb*Vc0"Lab users should be able to automate the setup of multi-machine configurations independently, including the software stack, executing commands and scrīpts within the guest OS/VM." This eliminates user involvement and prevents errors from being introduced in a manual process. Such automation even can lead to hands-off IT management, under which IT staffs are provided with self-service capabilities to operate with minimal administrative involvement. "Leverage user quota settings, policies and user management capabilities, and enable collaboration between lab users to setup on-demand provisioning in the lab. Users across multiple locations and geographies can access [virtualization services] and serve themselves."
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Look for LDAP or Active Directory for authenticating users against a central company LDAP/AD database. "[This allows] you to map users and groups from LDAP as users and groups in the lab management system. These users can be mapped into appropriate roles or personas in the lab system, which would govern their access to lab assets."
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Create secure production-like environments
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u&c-b;IP0Minimize costs by centralizing51Testing软件测试网/M h@ CVx
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Centralized lab operations across multiple divisions, groups and even geographic locations can have a dramatic cost-lowering affect. "With the design for a central lab view, you can monitor and access lab utilization reports and statistics, and leverage synergies across groups." Such systems also help increase collaboration and sharing across these multiple teams and/or business units. "For example, users can share software scrīpts, snapshot configurations, licenses and so on. This ensures better utilization, reduction in rework necessary and a dramatic increase in employee productivity."
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Y'Q!~_C]V0As virtualization becomes embedded in more of today's systems, it becomes ever more important to keep a handle on management. The way Gururaj sees it, virtual lab automation technology is a must-have for any lab manager. And of course he would; he is the founder and CTO of VMLogix, which makes automation tools for virtualization.51Testing软件测试网p%C ^qy

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