Despite massive use of public cloud resources, it is often practical and sometimes necessary to build local test environments. Even without a permanent internet connection, features can be tested, developed and researched. There are many different frameworks and tools for building a local test environment. There are big differences in terms of intended use, resource consumption and compatibility. In the presentation the different possibilities will be discussed in more detail and the advantages and disadvantages of the individual products will be presented. It will also be shown how an intelligent sharing of the created environments is possible.

1. daniel8192.wordpress.com@daniel8192
My local test Environment
Daniel Hillinger

2. Daniel Hillinger
• Senior Consultant at Trivadis Germany GmbH
Munich
• Focus:
• Oracle (RAC, Grid Infrastructure, Exadata, Dataguard)
• Unix/Linux (OEL, RedHat, Solaris)
• Azure (Automation, Design and Security)
@daniel8192 daniel8192.wordpress.com

5. Agenda
• Requirements for test environments
• Runtime environments
• Automation
• Sharing of environments
• Conclusion

6. Types of Tests
Functional tests of Utilities Application tests
Stress tests Performance tests

7. Generic requirements
Repeatable Same for all developers Easy deploy and rollback
High degree of
automatisim
Dependency handling Versioned

8. Requirements for local environments
Small footprint in terms of
resources
Mainly similar to
production
Completly local
DB
Application
Server
Webserver ...
Endian OS
Versions Libraries
Storage CPU
RAM
Performan
ce

9. Runtime environment

10. Runtime environments
• Native
• Fully virtualized operating system
• Container
• Sandbox

11. Native
• Directly on the OS
• Complex for some tools (Oracle DB)
• Bad portability
• Less comparable
• No overhead from environment
Host
OS
AppDB

12. Fully virtualized operating system
• High overhead from environment
• Maximum flexibel
• Easy to share
• Complex handling of dependencies
• Network and Startup
• Virtual box
• Workstation pro (fromer vmware workstation)
• HyperV
• Kvm
• Wsl2
• Parallels Desktop Host
OS
AppDB
Virtualisation
OSOS

13. Virtual Box

14. Container
• Less overhead from environment
• Shared kernel, but seperate libaries and runtime environment
• Flexibel
• OS dependencies
• Docker
• Podman
• Libvirt
Host
OS
ContainerContainer
AppDB
Container Runtime

15. Docker
• Large distribution
• Large amout of prebuild images available
on hub.docker.com
• Build described as code (Dockerfile)

16. Sandbox
• Less overhead from environment
• Shared kernel and libraries but separated runtime environment
• Wine / CrossOver
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (Wsl)
Host
OS
Runtime envRuntime env
AppDB

17. Windows Subsystem for Linux

18. Dependencies
• Maybe different for developer (linux, windows, macOS)
• Maybe different ways of working (IDEs)
• Maybe diffrent requirements for frontend, backend, mobile, …
• Available integration for IDEs
• Breakpoints
• Watching variables
• Tool dependencies
• Docker and Virtual box not in parallel

19. Automation

20. Automation
• Automatic setup and update of the environment
• Including Network
• Automatic start and stop with dependencies
• Automatic local deployment
• Same for all developers

21. vagrant init
vagrant up
vagrant ssh
Vagrant
• Easy setup
• Large community and ready to use images + vagrantfiles
on app.vagrantup.com
• Syntax based on Ruby
• Virtual Box, Docker, libvirt, …

22. Docker compose
• Only for Docker images
• YAML files for the config
• Supports data persistence, but must be configured

23. Kubernetes
• Container orchestration
• Only for docker or RKT images
• Integrated in docker desktop
• YAML / JSON files for the config
• Supports data persistance, but must be configured

24. Handmade Scripts
• Very flexible
• Huge amount of effort
• Hard to fit several environments / OS / …
• Seperated tests

25. Sharing of environments

26. Sharing of environments
• Fully virtualized operating system
• Remove all controlers (audio/usb)
• Remove all images (cd /disktette)
• Use VMDK format (short for Virtual Machine Disk) supported by Virtual Box, Vmware , Parallels
Desktop, …
• Split disks into 2g files
• Virtual box
• Install latest vbaddins
• Use the same version of virtual box

27. Sharing of environments
• Cointainer
• Share definition file (Dockerfile) and image
• Small images (minimise additional libraries)
• Easy rebuild with docker file

28. Conclusion

29. Conclusion
• A Large bunch of tools and options
• Combinations are possible and often useful
• Do it yourself is often to much work
• Prebuild images are the key to fast testing and current versions
• Be careful with network access to your local OS

30. What I use ...
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
• Virtual box
• Docker inside virtual box
• Sometimes an additional DNS server
• Vagrant, only for basic vm setup

31. Any Questions?