I know from experience and from speaking with people in various domains that the software build and test environment setup process can easily get complicated and hard. So what have people written about it? I came across this post from Dana Cline — and was I overwhelmed. Dana has the mix of everything to make his job really difficult — building the base images, installing the database and sample data, multiple DB configs, multiple server platforms, multiple web servers, multiple languages, multiple architectures (32 and 64 bit), multiple client platforms and even multiple product releases supported. Whew! Did he miss anything at all 
How complicated is your test and build scenario? Anything over and beyond Dana’s scenario? Would love to hear from you.
If you are anywhere close to how complicated the above scenario is (heck – even 20% as complex!) – you owe it to yourself to check out virtual lab automation products – such as VMware Lab Manager and VMLogix LabManager. In a few days, I’ll post a RoI calculator for you to check out. Can’t wait for it? Just drop me a note.
If you get yourself an account with us at VMLogix and login to our Virtual Portal, you will find an interesting set of resources – and among them a video that demonstrates how you can benefit from VMLogix LabManager automation. This video specifically demonstrates how your life with building/testing on multiple platforms/languages/systems/… and creating a test environment can be rapidly eased out.
- Srihari Palangala
July 30, 2008 at 6:38 am |
[...] #8 – Testing without tools:: This one is my personal favorite. I’ve read, heard, experienced time and again that test environments are complex. Shouldn’t we be embracing virtualization and virtual lab [...]
August 2, 2008 at 12:53 am |
[...] software complexity, hardware and software platforms, third party applications and so on. The permutations and combinations to test are just mind boggling. This becomes even harder with shrinking IT budgets and globally distributed [...]