The Continuous Testing 2.0 Toolkit: Lab-as-a-Service Tools and Best Practices for DevOps at Scale

Learn the tools and best practices of Lab-as-a-Service (LaaS) to apply them to the continuous testing (CT) components of large-scale DevOps environments. CT expert Marc Hornbeek details the industry drivers, eligibility criteria, benefits, components, and best practices of LaaS solutions. He runs through the assessment, implementation, and operation phases of a typical LaaS project lifecycle.

The Continuous Testing 2.0 Toolkit applies to any industry but is especially important to the next generation of connected systems and services, as opposed to standalone applications that can be tested in relatively simple environments. Seven LaaS benefits treated at length include in time-to-market, CapEx, and OpEx reductions and improvements in security, disaster prevention and recovery, regulatory compliance, and staff productivity and retention.

The LaaS solution components presented in this book are lab consolidation, best practices, tools, virtual and cloud technologies, expertise and project management services, and KPIs. Of these six components, Hornbeek focuses particularly on tools and best practices for LaaS users and administrators. Test orchestration tools considered include those deployed in the execution of automated test cases for a selected topology. The author shows how to integrate test tools with topologies orchestration to achieve a fully automated CT environment and how to link test cases to an abstract topology so that the topology can be invoked when a test is executed. Specific tools discussed include functional test tools, software analysis tools, traffic generators, impairment injection tools, log analysis tools, and tools to tap and monitor communication circuits and protocols.

• Harness strategic management, business management, and lab lifecycle management
• Use technology blueprint architecture, infrastructure planning, and infrastructure metrics
• Leverage environment provisioning, project planning, and project implementation
• Implement operations, lab orchestration, process automation, lab administration, maintenance, resource management, and security and IP
• Work with user services, user management, user SLAs, human resource management, and culture