Case Study: Disaster Recovery, High & Remote Availability Product Testing

The company provides Server Protection & Recovery software designed to help businesses attain DR, HA & RA for their critical Business Operations. It serves more than 7,000 customers from offices throughout the US.

Indusa has provided its testing services for the two Products:

• Server Recovery Product (DR & RA)
• Server Protection Product (DR, HA & RA)

Features of the Product include:

• Real-time mirroring of Server System State Image
• Disaster Recovery through Recovery of System State & Data Image to another Server
• Remote Availability through Fail over Control Configuration & Rescue
• Higher Availability through Reversal of Server Roles

Indusa's testing approach involved understanding of the Client Product, Clarification of Queries related to the Client Product, Preparation of Test Plan, Simulation of Production environment in the Testing lab, Build & Release Based Test Execution, Defect Management, Daily Reporting to client, Weekly Status Report through mails & Teleconference, Testing status tracking through Test Plan Matrix, Test Summary Report Preparation along with Defect report, Identification of Defect Pattern and Suggesting Improvement Areas to Client.

Virtualization of Servers in Testing Lab

• VMWare Server & Microsoft Virtual Server was used for creating Virtual Servers
• VMWare Converter was used for migrating existing Physical Servers & Virtual Servers into new Virtual Servers
• Use of Virtualization assisted in Performance testing, as we could create a large infrastructure consisting of Virtual Servers having variety of Application & Database Configuration.
• Virtualization helped in considerably reducing the time required for Installation & Configuration of New Servers

Types of Testing

• Functional Testing
• GUI Testing
• Regression Testing
• Performance Testing
• Automated Testing
• Compatibility Testing (Operating System & Application Servers)
• Usability Testing

Tools Used

• Windows Server Family
• Microsoft Active Domain Controller
• Hardware Configuration (Multiple Processor, Physical Server & Virtual servers, Hardware Drivers and Network Adaptors)
• Servers for Compatibility & Co-existence Testing:
  • Application Servers (BizTalk, SharePoint, MOM, WebSphere, IIS, Apache Tomcat, MQ Series, Tivoli, Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft Business Solutions - CRM)
  • Database Servers (SQL Server 2000 & 2005, Oracle 9i & Oracle 10g, Db2, MySQL)
  • Exchange Mail Server
  • Other (NAS File Server, HTTP File Server, TrendMicro AV, Cisco agent)
• VMWare Server & Microsoft Virtual Server for simulating the Production Environment
• LoadSim for Simulating Exchange Load
• Jscript & VBScript for Automation Testing as well as Automating Testing Process