Leveraging the cloud for on-demand test services

[Gordon]

The cloud is an enabler for testing that allows for a change in how on-demand testing can be delivered, reducing lead times to set up test resources and more cost effective.

View the webinar recording and slides Here

[Stephen]

How do you address data protection, i.e. some data cannot leave the country of origin?

[Gordon]

Hi Stephen,

Where data cannot leave the country cloud may not be the answer, and it is not the best method for every deployment, though is very useful for some . When we set up the cloud servers we can specify which region they will be and that will dictate which country the servers are held in. e.g Amazon AWS Europe west is Dublin so this may mitigate the issue depending on the data protection requirements, and will not be an option for some countries that do not a cloud host datacenter.

Where there in no regulatory restriction to the location the use of cloud, we ensure good security practices, the cloud servers for each client are only accessed by named accounts. Data is only held for a long as required. When we finish an engagement it is up to the client what to do with any data we used for testing, we can store it in the cloud for them (for later use), send it to them for their storage, or delete it.

thanks,
Gordon

[Stephen]

What about recording of tests and results for audit purposes/reuse?
Are the tests and results available for a while or do you package up the data and send to the client?

I’m thinking that; at times we are asked for reports on different stats based on the same data for auditing or different agendas, so would you client have access to the data at a later date to pull reports as required?

[Gordon]

It’s the clients data and they need to determine what they want to happen to it and the test assests. The general approach is for us to keep to test assets: test scripts, test data, test results etc. in the cloud for reuse, regression runs etc. if a client wants to hold the data we can make it accessible to them to securely download, or if they don’t want it and don’t want us to retain it we delete it (but this has not yet been requested).

When we set the cloud servers up we can configure a persistent virtual hard drive or use a cloud database, that will retain the data once the machine we are using to test with is torn down, when we need the server again we spin it up and attach the virtual hard drive or point it to the database. There is a cost for maintaining the virtual drive in storage but this is relatively very small.

[Stephen]

Thank you, you’ve been very helpful and the presentation was great.

It’s a bit quiet here today, I’m I in the right place, is everyone elsewhere?

[Author]

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