Contents

1. Kubernetes Container Technology
2. What Are Major Objects in Kubernetes?
3. What Critical Tasks does Kubernetes support?
4. What are the top benefits with Kubernetes?
5. How Does Kubernetes Strengthen DevOps?
6. What factors should be considered before planning for Kubernetes?
7. Conclusion

Kubernetes Container Technology

Enterprises continue to explore and embrace Kubernetes and it is now the fastest-growing open-source container-management technology. A container at a high-level looks like a virtual machine, but it shares the host system’s kernel along with other containers.

Kubernetes enables the automated deployment, scaling, and management of multiple containers to work together in harmony and helps in reducing operational challenges. It has the advantage of being used in a variety of environments as it allows orchestrating containers across deployments to public clouds, private clouds, and even hybrid environments.

What Are Major Objects in Kubernetes?

– Containers are light-weight and look like virtual machines.

– Pods are the basic building blocks that can run a set of containers.

– The replication controller allows Kubernetes clusters to self-heal.

– A service that exposes a logical set of Pods for communication. The service can be a LoadBalancer, ClusterIP or NodePort type.

Kubernetes particularly schedules and runs application containers on clusters of physical or virtual machines. Containers make it easier to host and manage the lifecycle of web applications inside a portable environment more efficiently and quickly. These containers act as replicas and serve to load balance incoming requests, and docker is the generally used tool used to deploy containers inside clusters (while rkt is another option to containerize the application). Docker containers are efficient in managing packaged applications. Containerization allows development teams to move quickly, deploy software more efficiently and consistently

With agile and DevOps processes are already widely adopted by enterprises, the enterprises continue to deploy more and more containerized applications in recent years. A leading global analyst report states that more than 75% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production by 2022 due to the advantage of containerization.

What Critical Tasks does Kubernetes support?

Maintains automated schedules:  Kubernetes manages to control the storage of the container and it is successfully scheduling the launch of the container on cluster nodes.

Supports Automated Rollout and Rollback: The presence of monitoring feature is advantageous as it helps to roll out applications to the desired state of a containerized application. If suppose anything goes wrong, then it is ensured that Kubernetes can roll back the application with ease.

Easily integrates with storage systems: Kubernetes is flexible to work with all popular cloud providers, thus, it can easily integrate with any preferred storage system. It effectively helps to add storage based on the app requirements.

Ability to run anywhere: The open-source feature of this tool and its characteristics support Kubernetes to run on any premises, such as on public or hybrid cloud infrastructures.

Flexibility to scale-in and scale-out: With the feature of adding containers, Kubernetes helps to scale-in and scale-out applications based on the requirements.

The ability of Self-healing: Kubernetes is effective in monitoring the health of containers, pods, and nodes. If any of the pod or container is dead, then it has the ability to reschedule, replace, and restart the container or pod by replacing it.

What are the top benefits with Kubernetes?

The best advantages that can be achieved to enterprisers with Kubernetes are:

Portable and Open-source: Kubernetes is 100% open source, and highly flexible. Hence, it is compatible across different environments and platforms

Workload Scalability: Kubernetes proves as efficient in the usage of infrastructure resources. Also, it provides the best scaling features, that can be used based on the purpose such as Horizontal infrastructure scaling, Auto-scaling, Manual scaling, and Replication Controller

Availability for Application and Infrastructure: Kubernetes is exclusively designed to handle applications and infrastructure when they are effectively needed during deployment

Ability to speed up delivery: Containerisation effectively helps in speeding up the process of deployment, i.e. installing, configuring, running, testing, and doing necessary changes to the software. It enhances the deployment process by providing various features such as Automated rollouts and rollbacks, Canary Deployment, and Programming languages and automation testing frameworks support

How Does Kubernetes Strengthen DevOps?

1. Enables the Shift from Host-Centric to Container-Centric Deployment:

An important advantage of using Kubernetes is to help engineering teams move from being physical and virtual machine-centric to being container-centric. These containers allow standardizing the environment and are independent of the underlying operating systems and hardware infrastructure.

2. Ensures More Flexibility for DevOps Workflow:

Kubernetes and Docker make for a highly flexible and portable technology that enables DevOps teams to have an easier, more hassle-free and consistent deployment for the use in development, testing and production environments. Such an environment eases developers to build one time and then provide the ability to run everywhere. Quality Assurance becomes easier due to the reliable and consistent development, test and production environments The DevOps team can create appropriate configurations to run in various environments while it helps the development teams to focus on coding features or thrashing out bugs and thus ensuring releasing of quality software.

3. Brings-in Cross-Functional Team Coordination within DevOps:

The usage of containers reduces the conflicts across teams with the same containers being used across developer, QA and deployment teams. It becomes easier for teams to collaborate, as it eliminates manual tasks related to deployment and scaling containerized applications.

4. Pets vs Cattle Model:

While the earlier deployment models correspond to ‘pet services model’ wherein each server is individually cared for and carefully maintained (just like pets). The Kubernetes model corresponds to ‘cattle service model’ wherein the servers just have identification numbers (just like cattle) and individual pods are almost identical to each other and are considered dispensable and replaceable by alternate pods.

5. Immutable Infrastructure & Reliability:

In Kubernetes, new containers are immutable and they are created when there is a problem encountered with the original state. The strength of Kubernetes platform lies in its reliability; has a series of health-check features that eliminate any issues that are associated with deploying a new iteration. This platform has an auto-healing feature that ensures the entire system is up and running.

6. Zero Downtime Deployments:

Kubernetes helps with blue and green deployments wherein new environments can be set up while the earlier environment has not been taken down yet and thus allows for easy switching to the new environment without any downtime. The blue-green deployment approach ensures there are two production environments wherein once the software is working in the green environment, you can switch the router so that all incoming requests are sent to it while the blue one is idle. Therefore, when once the green environment is live and stable, then the blue environment can be destroyed.

7. Support across various platforms:

Kubernetes always helps in supporting DevOps across multiple platforms. The open-source container-orchestration system enables in building and deploying any type of application into the container. These containers can be further shifted with the means of different host systems. However, if any misshapen during the process of shifting, Kubernetes effectively automates the patches, solve and updates the issue immediately.

8. Efficient to increase server usage:

There are scenarios where the apps that are not effectively packed onto servers can result in heavy load irrespective of the place where the app is tested, i.e. in the cloud or on-premise. In such scenarios, Kubernetes is efficient to increase the server usage and effectively manages the increase or decrease of the load.

What factors should be considered before planning for Kubernetes?

– Choose a platform that is ready for production and is capable to perform complete automation testing for the configuration without hassles

– Essential to select a platform that can improve flexibility, and transparency between modules

– Select a platform that is effective in supporting multi-cloud strategy

– Choose a platform that can incorporate automated intelligence to monitor and provide alerts

– Select or consider a platform that helps the applications to run without the need for any new environment

Conclusion

Kubernetes manages the life cycle of your containerized application deployed on (private or public) cloud or hybrid environments. Kubernetes is one of the most sought after container orchestration tool to keep the development agile and ensures an effective CI/CD process with automated deployments. It is significantly changing the way software is shipped and deployed in today’s world. TestingXperts can help you with easing your deployments using Kubernetes and containerization. Contact us to know about our services in helping you with automated deployments, containerization, and infrastructure setup.

The post 6 Facts How Kubernetes Empowers DevOps first appeared on TestingXperts.

In this digital age, enterprises are automating IT infrastructure and introducing DevOps methodologies to fast-track the pace of innovation. DevOps has become synonymous with release acceleration in the software development process. As a result, it is being embraced to accomplish the continuous demand from the businesses to deliver innovative and enhanced IT solutions to end-users at an ever-increasing speed.

Contents 1. Devops and Digital Assurance 2. Ways why DevOps is a MUST for Digital Assurance and Testing 3. Conclusion

DevOps is not only eliminating the limitations between the traditional silos of Business, IT Development, quality assurance and Operations but is also outspreading the agile and lean-principles from software development to the software deployment phase.

Devops and Digital Assurance

As organizations adapt digital in full force, QA and testing play a crucial role. Providing flawless customer experience and system performances has now turned out to be a mandate. Digital assurance is no more restricted to testing applications across Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud; customer experience assurance is equally important. Omni-channel experience and continuous performance are crucial, and Digital Assurance helps to ensure these for the consumers. Now, the main question that arises is  that how crucial is DevOps for Digital Assurance and Testing?

Ways why DevOps is a MUST for Digital Assurance and Testing

Increased collaboration

Improved collaboration is one of the key benefits that DevOps brings in order to break down the wall between developers, testers, and operations. With DevOps, every department takes full responsibility for the overall success of the product.

Enhanced automation

Companies considering to implement DevOps depend profoundly on automation, which not just helps with the time to market but also releases employees to focus on more value-added jobs. Having clearly defined workflows is a big part of DevOps, which is further reinforced by automation.

Shorter time to market and cycle times

Due to the more automation and better collaboration, DevOps drives an organization in getting the product or service to market faster. This results in typically shorter cycle time with better quality, and better alignment with the business goals of the company.

Quicker feedback

One of the biggest benefits of the continuous deployment cycle enabled by DevOps is quicker feedback. Quick feedback not only helps businesses deal better with ambiguity but also develop more transparency into what works and what doesn’t.

Conclusion

Digital assurance is vital as it makes more than a significant difference in business performance. By adopting DevOps, organizations can dramatically improve the value delivered by its business and can further streamline Digital Assurance and Testing.

As DevOps reduces cycle time without negotiating on quality, businesses must continue to delight customers by rapidly rolling out new features to production. TestingXperts’ thorough understanding and proper implementation approach for DevOps methodology can help organizations in their digital initiatives. Connect with us to successfully implement digital transformation.

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In a world where everyone is running at a breakneck speed, the slow-motion era of conventional testing will just not hold ground, any more. Step into the power of Continuous Testing and be a sharp enterprise.

Contents 1. Continuous testing and Devops World 2. Enters Dev, Shakes Ops 3. Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops 4. Shift to continuous testing

Continuous testing and Devops World

Before we knew it, the rise of an app-economy, fierce consumerization of technology, the arrival of digital natives and penetration of new technological marvels in everyday lives have strongly changed the way products and services are expected, consumed and forgotten. It’s a strange new-world where a company must be digitally-nimble and be there for a customer – every time and at any time.

Now in this app-stirred world, isn’t it fascinating that the rate of churn of new software is so fast today that to test it effectively in itself has become an onerous and slippery task? At the same time, can we ignore that in 2016, software failures have culminated into losses as huge as $1.1 trillion?

Let’s face it.

1. Always-on Users: Today’s customers are born into technology and there’s no weaning them away from the 24/7 and always-available services they have gotten used to. Enterprises and CTOs may find this problem a new beast altogether, since the digitally-born rivals are miles ahead in serving customers with jaw-dropping speed and an absolutely-robust grip on the pulse of the new-age customer.

2. Time to rethink the Status-Quo: There is no way that snail-paced, Luddite and bureaucracy-driven methods of building and testing apps can survive in this blistering world where apps come and go before you blink an eye.

How can you ensure that while your developers are trying to tune in to this new race, you also manage to have your QA and testing team ensure that the apps and offerings you put on your customer’s plate are not only dished out fast, but they also get a thumbs-up on quality and utility?

It’s a dilemma-dotted scenario where apps have to be continuously built, deployed, tested and released, but at the same time, IT can leave no room for any mistakes when it comes to defects, risks and usability issues.

Enters Dev, Shakes Ops

DevOps and the rise of Micro-services have prodded the Dev professionals into always being on their toes. However, the Ops side had to come and rub their shoulders too, without slugging behind.

That has engendered a very relevant and clever genre of testing, making businesses and testers re-imagine everything they took granted so far.

Benefits of Continuous Testing and Devops

1. It allows the software delivery pipeline to gather feedback that is immediate, continuous and actionable; and helps the business to be pre-emptive with risks around a software release.

2. One can sync in QA testing with Dev and Ops processes in an optimized, proactive and seamless way and hence put a tick-box on both business and development goals.

3. Now Dev sprints can find Ops and QA folks running side by side and both can ensure adequate quality, proper and effective coverage for frequent builds of the modern-day app-economies.

4. Since the onset of Agile development methodology and the app-economy era that came close on its heels, enterprises have been struggling to make sure QA is not miles behind the nimble and super-fast Dev processes that are almost status-quo now. With Continuous Testing, one can pull in a systematic approach, sturdy process improvement, and integration of QA into skate-board-strapped Dev and Ops processes; but, also be relaxed regarding the continuity that is fundamental and critical for faster development cycles.

5. Think of a new paradigm of automated tests. More organizations can now be seen embracing automated acceptance tests too. During the commit stage, these tests are being deployed and the range spans from functional to non-functional criteria while guarding against regression and ensuring overall business value as expected by the customer. These tests may spot errors that may be beyond the grip of unit and component tests as well. Interestingly, these acceptance tests are customer-facing unlike unit tests that are usually developer-facing. That’s a quantum leap for enterprises today that are fighting the relentless challenge of being relevant for digitally-savvy and always-on customers.

6. The context of a production-like environment is another highlight of these kinds of tests. Smart use of a risk-based testing approach will be a major accelerator for many enterprises here. With such tools and an evolved state of automation, enterprises can be assured of continuity in testing, and at the same time, confident about precise risk-assessment and mitigation insights that pour in at the right time to the right person.

7. Core automation is passé but in a continuous testing, adequate risk-based impact analysis comes to the forefront. Nowadays experts in the field are also offering a layered approach that entails test implementation layer and application driver layer. This helps the code to cover interaction with application to perform actions and test results. So much so that any small change in an application’s source code, configuration, environment or data can spur a new instance in the pipeline altogether.

Let’s remind ourselves that in this agile-app, fast-economy and tech-fuelled world, the age of monolithic and flabby software testing is over. Now is the time for the lean and the mean to jump in. Innovation and agility are no more longer in SDLC today, and conventional software testing cannot furnish the visibility, responsiveness, scope and endurance that the new age demands.

A shift to Continuous Testing is a no-brainer if you want to keep your customers happy with services run from robust, dependable, maintainable and automated suites as integral and easy parts of the lifecycle.

The certainty of providing the best user experience – one high on comfort and still free of defects needs a mindset switch – Test early, test faster, test often and test continuously.

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In a quest to achieve quicker delivery of software, organizations are increasingly adopting the Agile development model. However, to maximize the benefits of Agile software development, testing should be executed simultaneously with development. For this reason, organizations have been adopting DevOps for the last couple of years. The adoption of DevOps has helped teams to collaborate more, and implement practices such as ‘Shift-Left’ and ‘Shift Right’ testing. These practices are helping enterprises in building quality right from the beginning of the project. In this blog, we will discuss the importance of ‘shift left’ and ‘shift right’ testing approaches to ensure quality and agility.

Contents 1. Shift Left Testing Approach 2. Why shift-left? 3. What are the types of the Shift-Left Testing model? 4. Shift Right Testing Approach 5. What are the different methods of shift-right approach? 6. Why shift-right? 7. Conclusion

Shift Left Testing Approach

As the name suggests, the shift left testing approach starts to focus on testing as early as the requirements phase. Generally, the software testing process originates with static review of requirements specifications with a focus to identify and remove ambiguities in requirements and enhance the quality of requirements consumed down-stream. Shift left testing helps in identifying any defects early in the lifecycle.

The shift-left testing approach introduces testers at the primary stage of development to help them understand what requirements are being scoped and what the testability of those requirements is.  Shift left testing also helps testing teams to identify high-level test scenarios and start work on the detailed test cases.

Why shift-left?

– Time and resources are saved: Shift left approach helps in finding defects earlier in the software development lifecycle, allowing resources to invest less time in finding defects, thereby increasing quality and improving efficiency.

– Defects are found and fixed early: It’s very cost-effective to start identifying defects in requirements/user stories as it helps the testers to understand the testability of each requirement.

– Faster product delivery: Shift-left testing streamlines the development process, thereby ensuring faster delivery.

– Enhanced design: Through shift-left testing, bottlenecks, roadblocks, and possible performance failures are detected early on in the lifecycle, leading to a better design.

– Improved timelines and better ROI: With the shift-left testing there is less rework, projects work according to their regular timelines and the quality is always at the top. This ensures in delivering faster to the market with improved ROI.

Thus, the shift-left testing approach is an easy and economical way of reducing the time, efforts, and cost in improving the software at a complex state.

What are the types of the Shift-Left Testing model?

– Traditional shift left testing: In this testing approach, the focus is exclusively on the unit and integration testing by using API testing and modern test tools. This approach even has a drawback as it fails to focus on system-level and acceptance testing.

– Incremental shift left testing: In this testing approach, complex developments are broken down into smaller pieces to simplify the process. This practice of allowing the smaller segments to be tested one after the other helps the segments to be built upon each other. The incremental shift-left approach is widely adopted and used in the projects that have been having high complexity in the hardware.

– Agile/DevOps: This method helps in performing testing in numerous sprints and it is widely applied for developmental testing without operational testing. The Agile/DevOps Shift Left testing has gained popularity and it is preferred widely by many enterprises.

– Model-based shift left testing: This is the latest trend in shift left testing with a concept to find bugs at the earliest. Generally, shift-left testing is practiced at the early stage of a development cycle. But, in this method, the testing approach is during the design and development phase. This includes executable requirements, architecture and design models and helps in eliminating 45-65 percent of errors introduced in these early phases.

Shift Right Testing Approach

As we all know that shift-left is critical to software quality assurance and is an essential step in ensuring quality from the start, this approach alone is not enough to maintain performance and user experience. This has resulted in organizations adopting a ‘Shift-Right’ approach. The shift right testing approach initiates the testing task from the right that means the post-production of the software. In this approach performance and usability of an application are continuously monitored and feedback is sought continuously from users to understand the user behavior.

This approach helps in launching new features in the application fast and test by simulating its behavior in production.  This is achieved by gathering continuous feedback from the users through both formal and informal communication channels.

What are the different methods of shift-right approach?

A/B Testing:

This type of testing is commonly referred to as split testing or bucket testing. In this method, various new designs of a webpage are tested against the original designs of a page. The goal of this testing type is to determine which design generates more conversions. A/B testing is a part of the Conversion Rate Optimization process where the page with variation is compared with the ones of the original page. The page that helps in achieving better conversion is considered as the winner in the challenge.

Continuous Quality Monitoring (CQM):

This approach helps in improving the system quality during any software life cycle stage. A wide range of different tools and techniques are used to monitor the quality of the application. Code instrumentation, real user monitoring, and virtual user monitoring are a few CQM techniques that are used in the software during its production phase.

Chaos Testing:

In this method of testing, errors are introduced to the system to check its functionality and recovery in error conditions. By understanding how the system responds in stress conditions, it becomes easier for a team to identify and fix the bugs. The principle of chaos testing is to verify how the system responses when sudden attacks are introduced in the infrastructure, or the application or the network. The results achieved with this practice helps in improving the overall application standard.

Why shift-right?

– Quick feedback: Shift-right approach, allows the teams to gather user feedback and incorporate them in quick succession.

– Maximum test coverage: Shift right approach to testing provides testers the freedom of testing more and testing timely. This helps in eliminating more defects at the preliminary stage and provide a better quality application.

– More automation: Automation saves time and effort. Automating large parts of the process, when features and patches are being built into the application, helps in saving time and eventually helps in providing quality at speed.

Thus, adopting a Shift right testing approach offers improved customer experience and enhanced test coverage.

Conclusion

Considering the above-stated details, both shift-left and shift-right testing approaches are equally important and help in delivering a unique and different way of testing the software application. At TestingXperts, we follow both ‘Shift-Left’ and ‘Shift-Right’ software testing approach that adequately touches each and every aspect of the application to ensure best possible quality. Connect with us and allow us to make your software ready for business quickly.

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Changes have been continuously shaking markets as Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) of all sizes are competing to sustain with how customers consume the applications. There is fierce competition and delivering a superior product ahead of the competition is the only way to stay relevant in the market. Any new release of the product must have flawless functionality, fast performance, great customer experience, and reliable security.

In this scenario, application testing is a crucial phase of the development lifecycle. End to end testing of the application helps the organization enhance customer loyalty, builds a brand’s visibility, and boosts profitability. Due to the frequently changing requirements, together with a compact software development lifecycle (SDLC), ISV testing teams have been facing the pressure to do more with less budget.

Contents 1. Challenges faced by ISV’s 2. Strategy to overcome these challenges – Continuous Testing 3. Benefits of Implementing Continuous Testing

Challenges faced by ISV’s

1. Budget constraints: ISV’s, especially the smaller ones, may need to deal with low budgets spent in a strong vigil from investors or promoters. They need to re-define their product strategy and implementation approach as per the allocated budget.

2. Changing demands of product owner: There are times when customers tend to dictate what an ISV must deliver to be successful. With the rapidly changing requirements of the product owner, lots of flexibility is required.

3. Early release requirement: The scarcity of time for releasing software makes it difficult to turn ideas into requirements, develop, design, and released in a collapsed timeframe.

4. The internal team performing testing, affecting quality: ISVs, many times, do not have the budget to support a robust testing process. They usually take a leap of confidence that the developers will perform the necessary testing to ensure a successful product, which affects the quality.

5. Inability to attract talent: Smaller ISVs may be striving to make a mark in the industry and may have issues attracting talent and people who have relevant experience in this industry.

Strategy to overcome these challenges – Continuous Testing

The introduction of advanced software development models such as DevOps has allowed testers to apply their earnest efforts toward instilling quality into a software application right from its inception. The DevOps model enables dynamic and continuous testing efforts created right from the beginning of the development stage through the initial production release and beyond.

Several companies are adopting continuous testing practices to respond to competing demands and deliver higher-quality applications. Continuous testing helps in increasing productivity and the ability to deliver high-quality applications that are aligned with business needs.

Benefits of Implementing Continuous Testing

• Improves speed to market: Organizations can test potentially releasable software very early in the lifecycle. Testing at the time of application development allows the client to understand the quality of product. This allows ISV’s to release the applications faster, enabling them to get the revenue sooner.

• Improves quality: Continuous testing helps improve the application quality while verifying each component at the development phase through more automated tests.

• Increases ability to deliver: As an organization’s ability to provide high-quality software progresses, the number of issues within upstream development activities decreases. This surges the total number of usable software that is formed by the team, thus increasing the team’s ability.

• Lowers risk: Due to the combined and iterative nature of continuous testing practices , risks are able to be recognized and alleviated earlier in the process.

The post How Continuous Testing Eliminates Top 5 Challenges Faced by ISV’s first appeared on TestingXperts.

Our current software development and testing landscape require the elimination of each and every bottleneck present. If there is something along the regular development lifecycle that can be tweaked and moved for achieving greater quality and speed, it is a no-brainer to make that move. If you are looking to remove all these constraints, service virtualization should be your choice in 2017. With service virtualization, both developers and testers can create simulated instances of production environments to develop and test.

Contents 1. What is Service Virtualization? 2. Importance of creating Virtual Service Environments (VSEs) for the test environments 3. Challenges faced by virtual test environment 4. Considering virtual test environments as objects in your CI/ CD pipeline 5. Advantages of containerized test environments 6. Key benefits that Service Virtualization brings

Being part of a team that is following DevOps or Agile principles, delivering applications and updates as rapidly as possible becomes one of your essential tenets. Service virtualization provides teams with the option of testing different aspects of an application early, without compromising on the quality.

What is Service Virtualization?

Service virtualization is the process of emulating the performance of selected components within an application to enable end-to-end testing of the application. It provides testing teams with the application development and delivery ecosystem with a sequence of API test capabilities. Service virtualization can be used to create realistic simulations of needs that are not available. Service virtualization lets the teams to start testing early, more competently and continuously.

With the help of service virtualization, it is easier to replace unavailable dependencies with easily configurable and accessible virtual assets. Application development teams can use these virtual services to conduct integration testing earlier in the development process. Virtualized test assets appear and act real but can be duplicated and made available at times during the unavailability of real assets with the testing team. Virtualizing the test assets can enable your organization to create robust test frameworks that can provide comprehensive test coverage while keeping the costs low.

Importance of creating Virtual Service Environments (VSEs) for the test environments

To reach the ultimate goal of testing enterprise applications, organizations must build their own test environments by manually replicating the components they need to interact with. Traditional testing tools do not have the proper functionality to test these applications on a collaborative basis thoroughly. Virtual Service Environments provide multiple teams to have a realistic technique to simulate the test of an application. Virtual environments also help in reducing the hardware and installation costs.

Challenges faced by virtual test environment

Challenges offered by constrained access to dependencies during the development and testing becomes stronger when organizations move towards continuous delivery. The absence of suitable test environments for your dependencies can become a huge barrier when you want to build, test and deploy your software on demand without any help from real testers. Some of the key challenges faced by virtual test environments are listed below:

• Significant Increase in Testing cost

• Unstable and Late Delivery of environment

• Lack of Consistency

Considering virtual test environments as objects in your CI/ CD pipeline

It is a huge step to run your virtual test environments at some server in your network. However, service virtualization is the next step, as it serves as an enabler for continuous delivery. In this process, virtual assets are considered as artifacts that can be created, used, and destroyed at your convenience.

The most effective way to treat your test environments as continuous delivery objects is by containerizing them. Containerizing can be done by using various platforms, for example, Docker. With the help of these platforms, you can create an image that contains your service virtualization engine, data sources that contain the necessary test data, and all virtual assets to emulate the required behavior.

Advantages of containerized test environments

There are several compelling advantages for development and testing activities that can be brought by containerized test environments in your continuous delivery process:

• Test environments can be rolled on demand, so there is no need for waiting up until that dependency you need is accessible and configured like you want it to be.

• There is zero need for you to worry about resetting the test environment to its original state after testing is completed. You need to throw the test environment away and spin up a new instance ready for your next test run.

• Having the virtual test environment at your service every time makes it easier to analyze and reproduce bugs.

Key benefits that Service Virtualization brings

• Rapidly creates situations and patterns that emulate the expected activities There are various instances where glitches are felt while working on connected components within a system. Service virtualization helps in minimizing these glitches by virtually providing assets and resources. For example, by using graphical interface, you can create a virtual asset that produces the required behavior for developments and testing tasks.

• Provide common access to emerging assets There is a need for virtual assets to various team members or any team member who is located universally. Service virtualization expedites a scenario where the assets are available for everyone, on-demand and at a given point of time.

• Cost Savings By leveraging service virtualization, you can immensely save costs in the development and testing cycle.

TestingXperts is an expert in testing a plethora of domains for various organizations while adopting Agile and DevOps testing approach in different stages in the development cycle. We have been closely working with enterprises to provide Service Virtualization and testing solutions and effectively emulate virtual assets to automate integration, regression, and performance testing. Connect with us to know more about our testing services and bring speed and quality for your releases.

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1. What is Digital Transformation 2. DevOps and Digital Transformation 3. Steps to Accelerate DevOps with Digital Transformation 4. DevOps and Digital Transformation: Key to Business Success

What is Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is revolutionizing the way organizations are managing internal processes as well as delivering services to customers. Organizations in this digital age are more agile in adapting to change in order to innovate at the speed of business. As cloud-native enterprises use software to build new business models, disrupt, and digitally transform their respective industries, DevOps is becoming the culture to enable this change.

DevOps and Digital Transformation

DevOps has helped minimize barrier between developers and operations and made it easier for the applications to be built and deployed quickly for use. While developers focus on building modern solutions with better user experience, operations fixate on providing stability for site availability. Due to the difference in the focus of work, a gap can exist in both the departments. By adopting DevOps methodology, the conflict between developers and operations can be reduced. However, it requires a cultural shift to address the application behavior proactively rather than at the time of deployment.

The need for speed has been the key driver for DevOps adoption. In the era of digitalization, software is the source of variation, and DevOps is the key to accelerate development and delivery of software. However, not many companies have fully realized the direct connection between speeding up the DevOps implementation and accelerating the whole journey of digital transformation. If you are not able to accelerate the software testing, development, release cycles, and change management, the entire transformation schedule will hit a roadblock.

So, the question arises – How to accelerate DevOps in order to expedite the business outcomes of digital transformation. Given below are three key suggestions as an early point.

Steps to Accelerate DevOps with Digital Transformation

DevOps and Digital Transformation: Key to Business Success

In a business environment, DevOps is the key to superior business results. If you want to expedite your journey to DevOps, you need to get proper guidance from a technology-agnostic partner with DevOps expertise on a global scale. TestingXperts’ with its matured DevOps QA practices and global experience in software testing, can help you create a QA strategy for your DevOps journey to accelerate your digital transformation.

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