VMLogix LabManager recently won the “Best Solution from a New Player” award given by Software Test and Performance Magazine. This was announced in their November issue which you can download here.

Quoting from the magazine: “VMLogix LABMANAGER 3.5 took this year’s top spot for Best Solution from a New Player, which we define as a company less than five years old. Released in May, version 3.5 added support for Citrix XenServer 4.1 to its existing support for virtualization systems from Microsoft and VMware. LabManager 3.5 also includes some major user interface enhancements and to virtual network management.”

Thank you for the award and recognition!

Voke has published and made available a market commentary titled Fortune 500 Spending Required for IT Cost Savings. From a source that has published about the report:: “Following the economic downturn of 2000 to 2003, the Fortune 500 companies that pursued short-term cost-cutting strategies such as outsourcing and rollbacks in quality assurance found themselves ill prepared for future opportunities. The new research suggests that those enterprise organizations that continue to invest in critical IT areas such as software development, virtualization, and core lifecycle solutions will be better positioned for the next cycle of growth and expansion.”

One of the key findings/recommendations of the report: Invest in virtual lab automation. Again from the above source: “The virtues of virtualization are well documented but less known are the benefits that can be realized by deploying virtual lab automation technologies to streamline the software testing process;”

You can learn more virtual lab automation in this short movie found on our website.

Virtual lab automation solutions like VMLogix LabManager are used to manage internal/private clouds in the enterprise. The figure below demonstrates a typical deployment of VMLogix LabManager and the private cloud that is managed by it.

Users (e.g., developers, testers, support staff, pre-sales, demo, training etc.) connect to the LabManager server using a web browser. The LabManager server manages a set of virtualization hosts. The virtualization hosts are connected to shared storage; and the shared storage is used to retain the VM templates, VMs, clones and other lab artifacts such as user scripts and licenses.

Users can self-serve their lab infrastructure requirements through LabManager. For e.g., a user testing software can request or create a n-tier configuration which can then be deployed on any of the virtual hosts.

On the other hand, LabManager administrators maintain overall policies and administration control over the deployment. VMLogix LabManager in addition handles the license compliance on the deployed VMs and the sharing of VMs between the multiple users. In addition users can use LabManager to IP Zone (network fence) the configurations. Storage use is optimized through the use of delta-disk technology (linked clones) and administrators can maintain overall user quotas.

These capabilities enable lab administrators to deploy a lab self service framework, where lab users can access and create the required infrastructure (for testing, demo, training etc.) with minimal or no administrator intervention required.

Virtual Lab Automation and the Private Cloud

Most software testers focus on executing functionality, stress, load, performance, unit etc. type of tests. These are predominantly tests of the software being built that is certified/tested against certain hardware and base software stacks and platforms (configurations). There are a set of pre-defined (pristine) test environments (e.g., an OS, database, browser, network connectivity etc.) under which the developed software is installed and these tests are executed and evaluated.

However, as software testers, do you spend time tweaking the test environment setup (e.g., exploratory testing via client browser settings, multiple versions of databases existing on the server, network settings, previous versions of the software already installed and running etc.) and checking if ’stuff works’ with the developed software? How important do you think it is to test software under various (unchartered) system configurations and setup?

[Update] — I have posted this question on the Software Testing Club as well (including some clarifications on the question). Other testing experts are chipping in and talking about it here.

All major virtualization platform vendors offer a cheap (some even free) solution that allow you to run multiple virtual machines on your desktop. Examples include VMware Workstation, Microsoft Virtual PC and Sun’s VirtualBox.

While desktop virtualization products offer a ‘quick and dirty’ solution for some testing infrastructure needs, they fall short when virtualization is to be truly leveraged across the software labs. [Side note -- I have also written about why only a basic hypervisor alone is not sufficient for lab requirements in the past].

If you are currently getting by with desktop virtualization for your testing needs, maybe it is time for you to start looking at centralized virtual lab automation solutions. Virtual lab automation (VLA) solutions such as VMLogix LabManager and VMware Lab Manager are management systems by which recurrent labor-intensive manual tasks necessary in test and development labs can be automated and by which test and development lab processes and infrastructure can be streamlined and centrally managed.

Here are the key benefits of implementing a centralized virtual lab infrastructure instead of relying on individual desktop virtualization solutions:

Virtual lab automation solutions and desktop virtualization

Shared Infrastructure

• Allow all your lab users to leverage the central library of templates and other lab artefacts (scripts, licenses, software etc.). Save your lab users’ time and avoid re-work
• All infrastructure (hosts, storage, user access) is managed by the lab admin; users can access the lab in a self serve manner and focus on the testing
• Collaboration - VLA enables the sharing of multi-machine configurations and other lab artefacts among users/teams making it easy to drive synergies in the software engineering efforts
• Expand the lab use beyond just the testers and developers - bring support, pre-sales and training staff to use the central lab infrastructure effectively. This helps grow the lab user base

Scalable Infrastructure

• Access to enterprise server grade infrastructure (CPU, storage) to run complex resource intensive jobs (prolonged jobs can be run on the host server farms with no impact to the desktop machines)
• Ability to leverage and use network fencing - i.e., the ability run multiple copies of a multi-machine configuration in parallel without any IP/MAC address conflicts

On the other hand, here is the key benefit of using desktop virtualization.

Independence

• Desktop virtualization provides the ability to access the VMs anywhere even when you are not connected to the lab

How is your infrastructure for the testers/devs in your team setup currently? What are your experiences?

- Srihari Palangala

In a previous post, we talked about a framework to estimate cost savings from virtual lab automation solutions. The framework estimates time savings (and then translates it into corresponding $ savings) in your specific environment as virtual lab automation solutions can be used to accelerate software delivery and improve software quality. However, we only briefly touched upon the IT lab infrastructure cost savings.

As a continuation to the previous post, the figure below captures the elements of virtual lab management and automation solutions that enable IT cost savings. As a lab administrator / test team manager / software project manager you should be able to estimate the savings in your lab along the two dimensions shown - lab utilization and storage. These are tangible benefits of implementing a virtual lab solution (which are enabled by the features of VLA shown in the green boxes) and the costs savings can be realized from day 1.

Virtual Lab Management and the IT cost saving elements

If you would like to learn more about virtual lab automation solutions, you can register on the VMLogix website. You can learn more about VMLogix LabManager by logging on to the product page.

With the economic slowdown and the need to achieve more with less, is the software lab an area where you would like to control your costs?

- Srihari Palangala

VMLogix LabManager has many key features and functionality that differentiate it from VMware Lab Manager. You can find the entire list of differentiators here. The support and integration with the IBM Rational toolset is one such differentiator.

VMLogix LabManager is certified as being

VMLogix recently recorded a webinar that described and demo-ed the integration of IBM Rational Build Forge with VMLogix LabManager. This captures a flavor of the use and leverage of server virtualization in the automation of various application lifecycle management aspects (software testing, build management and automation etc.). VMLogix LabManager also offers integrations with Rational ClearQuest and the upcoming Rational Quality Manager (RQM).

You can view the recorded Build Forge integration webinar by registering here. Alternatively, if you are interested in learning about the VMLogix - Rational Quality Manager (RQM) integration (including a brief demo movie), drop me a note.

- Srihari Palangala

Sun has a powerful suite of virtualization product offerings - from the xVM server (for the data center) to VDI software (offering a secure virtual desktop). The also offer Ops Center (for VM and physical machine management in the data center) and VirtualBox (for VM creations on the desktop/laptop). Their platform support (x86 and Sparc) offers competitive differentiators with the current top 3 vendors (VMware, Microsoft, Citrix).

VMLogix has long maintained a hypervisor agnostic stance in the development of its award winning LabManager (and subsequently StageManager) products. A couple of months ago, VMLogix announced the support of Microsoft Hyper-V adding to the Citrix and VMware virtualization platforms which have been supported for a while.

In tune with the support of multiple virtualization technologies, VMLogix recently recorded a webinar with Sun. The webinar provides an introduction and overview of the Sun platform and highlights VMLogix’s complementary management products to the Sun product suite. Together the product suites provide a compelling proposition for customers as they start to use Sun’s virtualization technology across the dev/test labs to the data center.

You can register for the on-demand webinar presented by Sun and VMLogix.

Are you using/considering the use of Sun virtualization in your IT environment? What have your experiences been?

- Srihari Palangala

Software Trials and Evaluations are Generally a Laborious Effort for ISVs & their Prospects

If you are an ISV, there is generally a lot of friction in getting your prospects a copy of your software and letting them evaluate/use it. Most ISV product managers are confident that once they can get their software in the hands of users and they test drive it, end users will be able to see the value and benefits the software provides.

To achieve this, traditionally ISVs have offered a free download of their software with a specified license trial period. There are multiple barriers for end users with this approach:

1. Download the evaluation software after filling out the required forms on the ISV corporate web site.
2. Prepare and have the infrastructure ready on premise to install and evaluate the software.
3. Install and get configured with the software. Start flexing all functionality of the software to see that it works for them.
4. Make the purchase, provided the software meets the requirements.

Some ISVs have started adopting the appliance packaging route to make step #3 above somewhat easier.

Though this trial download approach has barriers, in some product cases this is a preferred route for the prospects. For e.g., when the primary stakeholder/user is to be an IT administrator/technical user - they typically like to see all the bells and whistles accompanying the software (including its installation and administration). In such cases, they would like to evaluate on-premise locally.

In other ISV cases where the purchase decision/primary stakeholder is the end business user (e.g., financial software, business process software, HR software, accounting software etc.) - software trials via the trial download route can impose a lot of hurdles and needless friction.

How can Virtual Lab Automation help in this scenario?

Virtual Lab Automation ensures rapid, highly repeatable, resource-optimized deployments of complex, multi-virtual machine environments. It allows end users to create, access and work with multi-machine configurations in self-serve and no-hindrance way. If these configurations have the ISV software pre-installed and configured for trial, it provides prospects an easy way to get access and evaluate/try the software. Here are some of the benefits of migrating to such a scenario if it works for your prospects:

Benefits to the ISV of a hosted evaluation system

• Reduce the hand-holding and effort required during software evaluations (especially around the installation and configuration stages). Setup the systems once and let products like VMLogix LabManager handle the management of the virtual machine environments (including the user access, control and self-serve management). Dramatically reduce the time taken for software evaluations
• Easily install upgrades/patches/updates to the demo systems
• Provide every prospect with a pristine evaluation environment with minimal administrative effort
• Monitor the use of software by prospects (who are the ones conducting the most active evaluations? what features are they most interested in? etc.)

Benefits to the software evaluator/user

• No-delays and friction in obtaining environments where the software is pre-hosted and ready for use/evaluation. Start evaluating the software immediately and reach a decision much more quickly
• Access the systems in a self-serve manner (via the web browser)

How are you enabling your prospects with software evaluations currently? Would the use of virtual labs help your prospects and improve their evaluation experience?

- Srihari Palangala

Virtual Lab Automation (VLA) solutions reduce IT costs, accelerate the software time to market and improves the quality of the software developed. While evaluating the business value of a VLA solution, it is important to be able to estimate the magnitude of $ cost savings that a VLA solution can provide. We outline below a framework that you can use for quick estimates of cost savings in your software development and test scenario.

1. Reduction in IT costs — Virtualization can help drive cost savings and many analysts seem to agree. Virtualization reduces power requirements and improves space utilization. Beyond these benefits provided by vanilla virtualization, a virtual lab automation solution provides cost savings via better storage utilization (see earlier post on linked clones) and better lab utilization (e.g., resource sharing between users and teams). In addition, VLA can be used to rationalize lab infrastructure and help IT administrators perform better capacity planning.
2. Accelerate software time to market — VMLogix LabManager introduces a high degree of automation and dramatically reduces the manual effort and time necessary to provision multi-machine configurations. Features like automation with guest VMs brings about a huge saving (and practically eliminates user intervention) in the time required to provision and create multi-machine test bed environments. The VMLogix LabManager ROI calculator provides a framework for you to estimate the cost savings by transitioning a manual provisioning environment into one powered and driven by virtual lab automation.
3. Imporve software quality — VMLogix LabManager provides powerful third party ALM tool integrations which combined with the guest VM automation capabilities helps dramatically improve the test matrix coverage and thereby the software quality. Again, the VMLogix LabManager ROI calculator includes a framework to estimate the bug reproduction costs and the potential savings by using a virtual lab automation solution in the environment.

Pulling it all together

You can easily add up your cost saving estimations based on the framework for points #2 and #3 above. For #1, we do not have a published framework (updated 11/4/2008 - check the post Control and Reduce the IT cost spending in your software test lab), but with the ability to consolidate (currently at around 30-40 VMs on a single host and this consolidation is continuously improving with better hardware available) you can derive a basic savings estimate (for e.g., this press release from the Butler group though somewhat dated estimates that a 250 dual core server environment can save UK£ 2 Million).

In comparison to the above cost savings, virtual lab automation solutions like VMLogix LabManager cost a small fraction and IT administrators/users can justify their purchase & deployment in a very short duration of time.

- Srihari Palangala