Cloud-based test environment and its advantages for developers

To ensure that end users receive the optimal features and benefits of the software, developers put considerable effort before releasing the final version. One of the important stages of this preparatory work is testing. This helps to identify various problems at all stages of development. Today, many companies use cloud platforms, and by creating Cloud Instance on one of them, they receive a practical tool for deploying testing environments, recognizing its efficiency and convenience.

During the development phase, new services are conceptualized and created. Once completed, they migrate to the productive environment. But before they are opened for widespread use, their functionality is thoroughly tested. This process is carried out in test environments, specially designed platforms where comprehensive tests are carried out. Understanding the importance of a systematic approach to testing is critical. It's not just about implementing best practices; it's about organizing the entire process from the very beginning. Clearly defining the objectives, testing scope and methodology, and ensuring the test environment is ready are essential.

The role of the testing environment today

In the context of accelerated digital transformation and high standards of software quality, ensuring the stability and continuity of application operation is at the center of developers' attention. Testing done in an isolated and reproducible environment does more than just identify bugs. Engineers can safely and confidently experiment with new features, security updates, and performance improvements, research, and deliver high-quality products while minimizing potential negative impact on end users. And additional security will be provided by Firewall (FWaaS) — this is a reliable blocking of unauthorized incoming and outgoing network traffic.

This sandbox helps organizations build a continuous development strategy, ensuring a continuous flow of innovation while minimizing risk to end users and the business as a whole. Where you deploy your test environment is an important consideration, as the choice between cloud and virtual sites can significantly impact the efficiency and ease of the testing process. Depending on performance, security and scalability requirements, as well as available resources, developers can provide optimal conditions for deep and thorough analysis of their products, improving the resulting quality and user satisfaction.

Deploying a test environment in a virtual architecture:

1. Resources and performance: customers may experience resource limitations such as CPU time and memory, which can slow down the testing and development process;
2. Hardware compatibility: the technology may not take into account the specific hardware that is used in real-world environments;
3. Configuration complexity: setting up and maintaining a virtual environment can require significant knowledge and time;
4. Limited access: the ability to work with the test environment may be limited by location and network infrastructure;
5. Scalability: limited by the capabilities of a particular virtual environment and can become a complex process.

Deploying a test environment in a cloud architecture:

1. Elasticity: provides the ability to easily scale resources depending on current needs, ensuring optimal use of resources;
2. Usability and management: provides flexibility in setting up and managing the test environment, making it easy to create and configure a testing environment;
3. Availability: cloud services provide ease of access and increased availability from anywhere in the world, which is important for reliable testing and eliminating temporary downtime;
4. Isolation: Test environments in the cloud can be easily isolated from each other, which helps prevent test cases from interfering with each other;
5. Saving time and resources: offers quick and convenient tools for setting up a test environment, minimizing technical difficulties for the client;
6. Security and recovery: cloud providers offer advanced security and data backup solutions;
7. Cost efficiency: Cloud solutions reduce capital investment by providing pay-as-you-go services.

Overall, cloud architecture offers improved and tailored solutions for deploying and testing environments compared to traditional virtual environments.

Example of using a test environment

Let's look at an example of using cloud architecture to deploy a test environment using the example of a corporate web application.

Objective: establishing a reliable, scalable, and easily configurable testing environment for conducting automated and manual tests on the new corporate web application.

Deployment steps:

1. Definition of requirements:

• Identification of resource requirements (CPU, memory, network bandwidth);
• Defining safety and regulatory compliance requirements.

2. Choosing a cloud provider:

• A provider of this service is needed that meets the technical requirements and budget of the project, such as OneCloudPlanet.

  
3. Cloud environment configuration:

• Creation of Cloud Instance (virtual machines) with the necessary parameters;
• Setting up network infrastructure and security rules.

  
4. Deploying the application and test environment:

• Initializing the application and connecting the necessary test equipment;
• Setting up an environment for automated and manual testing.

  
5. Integration with CI/CD:

• Integration of the cloud environment with continuous integration/deployment systems.

Testing process:

1. Automated testing:

• Running automated test scripts using suitable tools and frameworks.

  
2. Manual testing:

• Conducting manual tests to verify specific scenarios and functionality.

  
3. Monitoring and reporting:

• Collection and analysis of performance data, identification and documentation of defects (bugs).

  
4. Optimization:

• Analyzing test results and optimizing environment and application configuration to improve performance and reliability.

Thus, by using a cloud-based architecture to deploy a test environment, the team achieves high testing efficiency and agility while reducing the time and resources required to manage physical infrastructure. These services also provide improved security, availability, and scalability to ensure successful testing of your enterprise web application.

Scalability

This criterion is a key advantage of cloud technologies, allowing organizations to easily adapt to changing needs and growth. The flexibility of cloud technologies concerns all components of the service, like one of the cloud products — Block Storage, which provides a unique ability to effectively manage disk space, adapting to current business requirements and power consumption, increasing it even after the volume is created. Additionally, when certain resources are no longer needed, they can be easily disabled, eliminating unnecessary costs.

Thus, migrating to the cloud gives companies the opportunity to grow and evolve with confidence, knowing that their technology infrastructure will scale with them, providing the necessary resources as needed and ensuring stable and productive operations. This flexibility and ability to scale quickly not only supports continued growth, but also provides a strategic advantage in a dynamic business environment where the ability to quickly adapt to change can determine an organization's success.

Economical

Rational use of resources and budget optimization are among the priorities for many organizations, especially when it comes to the distribution and use of IT resources. Cloud solutions bring significant optimization to this aspect, providing the ability to manage and scale the use of resources taking into account current business needs. The pay-as-you-go model offers financial flexibility and avoids unnecessary costs associated with maintaining excess resources.

This approach not only reduces the company's operating costs, but also provides the ability to quickly and effectively adapt to changing market conditions and requirements, accelerating innovation and maintaining the smooth operation of key business processes. Effective use of cloud services leads to budget optimization and allows the organization's resources to be allocated to the highest priority and strategic areas of business development, contributing to its sustainable growth and competitiveness in the market.

Backup and disaster recovery

Data is one of a company's most valuable assets, which is why key strategic tools are so important to ensure business continuity in any environment. The use of cloud platforms allows you to implement flexible backup strategies tailored to individual business needs. It also provides the ability to quickly restore systems and data, minimizing losses and downtime in the event of incidents, thereby strengthening business reputation.

The technologies and strategies chosen for backup and recovery depend on the specifics of the business, the criticality of the data and systems, and recovery time and recovery point requirements.

OneCloudPlanet takes a progressive approach to backup, integrating advanced methodologies to ensure the reliability and integrity of your information. One of the methods used is block-by-block copying to an offline disk, providing a fast and efficient backup solution. During this method, data is transferred to the backup using a sophisticated operation, where additional options such as data compression, checksum calculation and various conversions can be easily performed to provide additional protection and optimize storage.

In addition, our company uses a disk snapshot copy strategy, ensuring the security and availability of virtual machine data without the need to stop its operation. By creating an instantaneous snapshot of the disk, the system allows you to back up data by transferring it from this snapshot, thereby ensuring business continuity and minimizing downtime. With these methods, OneCloudPlanet emphasizes its commitment to providing reliable and efficient backup solutions to its customers while offering flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness in data and resource management.

Various cloud technology models

At the heart of the modern digital space are cloud technologies, providing diverse and efficient models for delivering IT services to cover the multiple needs of different organizations.

To suit specific needs and strategies, corporations can choose between several basic models: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which provides companies with dedicated or virtualized resources. such as compute power and storage, giving full control over network architecture and management.

Each of these models serves different business requirements and strategies, providing the flexibility, scalability and agility required for today's digital ecosystem.

Global coverage

Cloud solutions like OneCloudPlanet have become powerful global accessibility and adaptability capabilities, providing businesses and individuals with a platform that can meet a wide range of their needs. The entire world is moving towards digitalization and hence, diverse needs from corporate to personal are at risk of being missed in the absence of comprehensiveness in IT solutions. However, with cloud solutions, every consumer has a set of tools at their fingertips to meet their unique needs and goals.

Thus, for example, deploying a test environment on platforms such as OneCloudPlanet becomes not just a technical task, but also an opportunity to experiment, adapt and optimize products and solutions so that they are as relevant as possible to specific goals and needs. One such solution is Virtual Private Cloud, which provides increased security and infrastructure isolation in the production cloud, thereby emphasizing the versatility and global reach of modern cloud technologies and making them an indispensable asset in today's digital world.

Easy deployment

Cloud technologies demonstrate an outstanding ability to reduce the time required to deploy IT solutions to a minimum. Users value the ease of use of cloud platforms, and here ease and speed of deployment are critical parameters. Designed with the end user experience in mind, the OneCloudPlanet platform allows individuals and businesses of all sizes to deploy the virtual environments they need in just a few clicks.

Starting a project or experimenting with a new idea doesn't require you to go through lengthy setup and configuration processes — all you need to do is select the options you want and hit the "launch" button. What's more, with OneCloudPlanet, customers receive a $20 trial to get started and test the project at no additional cost, further highlighting our commitment to making cloud technologies accessible and easily applicable to everyone.

DevOps integration

In the fast-changing world of agile development, DevOps is becoming a key methodology. This enables seamless collaboration between developers and technical support teams, enabling fast and efficient application development, deployment and troubleshooting. If you do not have such an experienced specialist or have difficulties with cloud solutions, OneCloudPlanet has a solution such as basic administration — we will set up backups, deploy monitoring systems, install software and monitor the operation of your services.

Active integration of cloud technologies

Many well-known companies around the world are actively integrating cloud technologies to solve various business problems:

• Coca-Cola uses cloud solutions to reduce time to market for its products and optimize business processes;
• BMW uses the cloud to efficiently develop and test new products and services and to improve the performance and safety of its vehicles;
• Adobe is turning to cloud technologies to process and store the enormous data needed to improve its software products;
• GE Healthcare is implementing cloud-based information management platforms to help healthcare professionals and organizations improve the quality of healthcare;
• UPS is using cloud solutions to improve its logistics and transportation operations, as well as to increase the efficiency of its package tracking systems.

Hence

Using cloud technologies to deploy test environments shows undeniable benefits. Amazon is known to actively use its AWS cloud platform to deploy test environments, which can significantly reduce the time and resources required for this process. For example, according to 2020 data, AWS allowed Amazon to reduce the time to deploy test environments by more than 60% and reduce infrastructure costs by 30%.

According to the Right Scale 2020 State of the Cloud Report, 93% of companies surveyed use a multi-tenant cloud solution, highlighting the growing popularity and relevance of cloud technologies in today's industry.

At the end of 2022, the global market for public cloud services amounted to $545.8 billion. This is 22.9% more than in 2021, when costs were estimated at $444.2 billion. Such data are provided in an IDC study, the results of which were made public July 6, 2023.

Effective use of cloud technologies, in particular those offered by OneCloudPlanet for deploying test environments, facilitates and speeds up the workflow, reducing risks and ensuring a high level of security. In particular, improved resource management, as well as the ability to backup and restore data in the cloud, allow developers to focus on their core business — creating a high-quality software product.

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