Innovation is within reach: How an IBM testing agency can use WebSphere Cloudburst to improve efficiency and agility

Innovation is within reach: How an IBM test facility can use WebSphere Cloudburst to improve efficiency and agility

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"Tell me a case."

Despite working in the lab, we cherish the opportunity to go out and have direct conversations with our customers. Recently, many of our conversations revolve around cloud computing, specifically IBM WebSphere Cloudburst™appliance and IBM WebSphere application Server Hypervisor Edition virtual images.

Typically, these discussions revolve around the technical features and implementation methods of these solutions. We usually discuss how WebSphere cloudburst and how these special virtual images are applied to their hearts. Then, it seems, after a little thought, they always say, "That sounds good, but tell me who is using it, what kind of value do they derive from it?" ”

We like to hear this kind of problem.

On the one hand, we have a solid and continuously growing user ecosystem, and those users derive real value from the WebSphere cloudburst solution. Among the many benefits, our users have witnessed the value of these solutions in reducing costs, improving agility, and rigorously deploying business value and technical behavior. Although each user case clearly highlights the value of the device, there is one case that we consider to be the most representative. That's how our own WebSphere application Server continuous Test organization uses WebSphere Cloudburst to reduce costs and overcome the difficulties of adopting agile development practices across the enterprise. (Yes, we use our own products.) ）

Agile development is a journey, not a decision

If you are engaged in or interested in the software development industry, you may notice that agile development is becoming more and more popular. In recent years, IBM has also joined in the transition to more agile development. One of the teams in this journey is the WebSphere application Server development team, and they have achieved significant results. Within a few years, the team developed and delivered several WebSphere Application Server feature patches, updates for some products in this area, and an alpha version of the WebSphere application Server V8. Without the speed provided by the agile development process, such fruitful results would be difficult or impossible to achieve.

Of course, it is well known that fast software development and delivery is useless if the software is of poor quality. Fast delivery of low-quality software is a bit like a quick preparation for a kitchen order, but it turns out that the dishes are not cooked yet and taste extremely bad.

To ensure that the dishes are "fully cooked", the development and testing team must establish a mechanism to ensure enterprise-level code quality throughout the development process. To this end, the organization should:

Establish stringent test standards that require the writing of automated test cases that are designed for production-like WebSphere application Server topology execution.

Extend the traditional test-driven development methodology system to ensure that the system regression test suite evolves with all new features and patches.

Create the continuous Test team, which is responsible for performing a comprehensive regression test on each version of WebSphere application Server.

Create automated test Suites for customer-class applications that perform stress and performance testing throughout the development cycle.

After setting up a set of responsibilities, the Organization focuses on implementing each responsibility and quickly realizes that, to achieve these tasks, they need an automated, fast, and unified approach to setting up the WebSphere application Server environment. To do this, continuous Test team:

A custom hardware leasing application has been developed so that testers can check the resources used to test the work.

Use the operating system installation on the IBM tivoli®provisioning Manager Automation Lab machine.

Build installation and configuration scripts for WebSphere application Server.

This approach reflects a highly automated and efficient process for setting up the test environment. This approach allows the team to simultaneously test up to 8 different versions of WebSphere application Server (yes, 8). In addition, the team is able to enable the WebSphere application Server environment created through this process to accept more than 2 million tests a day. In short, the team performs tests that support rapid development while maintaining outstanding quality.

Although the team has made great strides in carrying out all of their responsibilities, they are always focused on ways to improve efficiency. Specifically, the team identified the following areas to be improved:

Usability: Although highly automated, the setup process for these WebSphere application Server test environments still contains error-prone elements because of the complexity and number of elements involved. This results in a 20-50% failure rate when the environment is configured.

Utilization: Like many Test teams in this industry, they experience lower hardware utilization (average 6-12%).

Manageability: The testing organization works with a number of small, agile teams. Effectively managing and sharing hardware resources among these teams while ensuring adequate utilization is a challenge. In addition, it is difficult to ensure that all test teams use a standardized, certified WebSphere application Server configuration.