Web Application Testing Rig: What do you use? Any suggestions?

Question

Hi guys,

I have recently inherited testing responsibility on a web application. A lot of our testing is related to specific operating systems and browsers.

Does anyone have suggestions on building a test rig? I am not talking about automated testing (that is a separate issue that I'm working on). This is more for confirming specific bugs.

I was thinking of getting a medium powered desktop machine and multi booting several versions of Windows, but that seems like quite a to-do. Is there a better solution?

I would be open to multiple Windows Desktop VPS machines, but I can't seem to find anything suitable.

Feel free to suggest anything!

Answer 1

You probably wouldn't need to setup multiboot, you can use Multiple IE's for IE. A better solution though might be a Mac and use Parallels or VMWare Fusion and you can have multiple OS's, including Linux flavors.

Answer 2

VMWare Server all the way. Run multiple OSs, including several windows installs with different browser versions. Use snapshots to go back if you really screw up the vhost, etc. Can't go wrong with VMWare. The server version is free.

Answer 3

Have you thought about using something like: http://browsershots.org/

It'll take screenshots of your app in multiple browsers and allow you to spot check them quickly.

Answer 4

If you're looking at fixing styling bugs, I would check out BrowserLab from Adobe. It's far better than Browsershots with far less clutter.

Answer 5

Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) runs on os x, windows and linux and can run a number of different guest OSes. My recommendation would be to get a mac so you can test OS X browsers natively (because you can't virtualise OS X), and run various versions of windows and optionally linux as virtual machines.

Answer 6

Definitely no need for virtualization. Take a look at BrowserSeal and IE collection

Answer 7

If you want to avoid the costly licensing route for what you're using only as test servers, try using the Microsoft IE App Compat VHDs. They are fully functional virtual machines that dont require licenses, but will expire after 90-120 days. Big downloads, but worth the cost savings of licenses, and can be discarded and replaced easily.