Parallelizing a Distributed Testing Environment

Insuring software correctness is important in all development environments, but it is critical when developing systems that store mission-critical data. A common bottleneck in the development cycle is the turn-around time for automated regression tests. Yet as products mature, lines of code increase, and features are added, the complexity and number of tests required tends to grow dramatically.

This hampers quick detection and correction of errors, leading to development delays and missed deadlines. To address this problem, we embarked on a path to optimize and parallelize our automated testing framework; in this presentation we detail the result of our effort and the gains we achieved in streamlining our development process.

Learning Objectives

How to scale a test framework as the product increases in complexity
Identifying where time is spent in your test framework
Making the build system resilient to isolated failures
The utility of virtual machines in accelerating testing