Introduction:
The buzzwords we hear at every industry event are – Cloud, Virtualization and SaaS. What are each of these technologies? How do these impact the various parts of the application lifecycle – architecture, development and testing?

These new technologies require a shift in the way that we manage our information infrastructure. The ease with which engineers can deploy virtual servers is both an advantage and an disadvantage. Some of this results in missing out on important areas around planning and validation of the solution. When configuring security or performance monitoring solutions, a stable network baseline is assumed. However, the ability to build-tear down-build virtual servers at will, can work havoc upon baselines. This includes already established baselines, causing unreliable monitoring results.

Some of the questions thrown up include:
1. What is the optimum VMs to processor ratio for peak network performance?
2. What is the impact on Application tuning?
3. What is the impact on Database tuning?
4. How do multiple NICs impact the performance of virtualized servers?
5. How does it affect application availability?
6. What is the effect of latency introduced by virtualization on application performance?

This presentation discusses the unique testing challenges that virtualization and cloud computing pose. We will discuss some of the issue to watch out for while planning for the testing cycles.

Abhik Biswas, Vice President, Prakat Solutions

Abhik has spent most of his career in the IT Infrastructure and infrastructure management space. He is currently involved with the design and deployment of a Cloud Incubation and Research facility in Southern India and is also involved closely with the development of a cloud based offering which will hit the market in early 2010.