Companies that focus on cloud infrastructures for both developing and running their applications are likely to have the highest benefit of test driven infrastructure tools such as configuration management and their spec-oriented testing counterparts. However many enterprises have not moved to the cloud yet. Often limited by contracts, regulations or security considerations, they too are in need of testing their infrastructure that service providers built for them. The talk shows approaches to infrastructure testing and demonstrates the use of serverspec (http://serverspec.org/).

1. © 2014 Cassini Consulting
Andreas Schmidt
Testing server infrastructure with
serverspec

2. Cassini Consulting
@cassinigmbh
• IT & Management Consulting
Andreas Schmidt
• From Dev to Ops
• Infrastructure & Deployment
Automation w/ ruby

3. • Purpose of infrastructure testing
• #serverspec
• Examples / Demo
• Use Cases & benefits
? !

4. Provisioning &
Delivery

5. Application
being tested?

6. Servers
being tested?

7. How is
infrastructure
being specified?

8. „Startup“
• Recent cloud
technology
• Virtual Infrastructure
Provisioning
• „Phoenix Server“
„Classic“
IT Environments
• Both virtualized &
non-virtualized
• Mixed Provisioning
processes
• IT outsourcing
• IT System & Software
Architecture
Regulated
IT Environments
• i.e. banking,
insurance companies,
government
• + Compliance
• + Security
Low Cost
Short Cycle Time
Documentation
(Internal/External)
Audit Capabilities
Internal
Documentation
Acceptance Tests

9. Automated
Provisioning &
Configuration
Management

10. Lower-level configuration aspects
• VM infrastructure & kernel parameters
• Networking
• Logical volume management
Side effects
• RPM post-install scripts
Documentation
• Specification of infrastructure
• Human Readable
Testing on machine itself
what‘s missing?

11. Machine parse-able
Human read-able
Infrastructure
Specification

12. serverspec
• www.serverspec.org
• github.com/serverspec/serverspec
MIT License
Gosuke Miyashita @gokusenator
„With serverspec, you can write RSpec tests for
checking your servers are configured correctly.“

13. serverspec
describe package 'openssh-server' do it { should be_installed } end
describe file '/etc/ssh/sshd_config' do it { should be_mode 600 } it { should be_owned_by 'root' } end
describe service 'ssh' do it { should be_enabled } end

14. Development box
CM
code

15. Development box
CM
code
CM
code
specs
Test locally

16. Development box
CM
code
Staging
Provision
CM
code
specs
box
„state“
Test locally

17. Development box
CM
code
Staging
Provision
Test locally
CM
code
specs
box
„state“
server
spec
„Spec“ box

18. Development box
CM
code
Staging
Provision
Test locally
CM
code
specs
box
„state“
Test on
server(s)
server
spec
„Spec“ box

19. Development box
CM
code
Staging
Local VM or Container
Provision
Test locally
CM
code
specs
box
„state“
Provision
Test on
server(s)
server
spec
„Spec“ box

20. Development box
CM
code
Staging
Local VM or Container
Provision
Test locally
CM
code
specs
box
„state“
Test
Provision
Test on
server(s)
server
spec
„Spec“ box

21. Development box
CM
code
Staging
Local VM or Container
Provision
Test locally
CM
code
specs
box
„state“
Test
Provision
Test on
server(s)
server
spec
„Spec“ box

22. $ gem install serverspec
diff-lcs, highline, rake
net-ssh
rspec, rspec-core, rspec-
expectations, rspec-mock
specinfra, serverspec
Basics
ssh to target
hosts
spec basics
„Backend“ for infrastructure
tests (local/remote, command
abstraction, helpers)
„Frontend“ w/
resource types
à rspec

23. Demo
• Serverspec Basics
• Overview of resource types
• Using abstractions and facts
• Introduce roles
• Environment-independent specs
through properties

24. Monitoring vs. Spec
• Dynamic Aspects
(crashed servers, services
not reachable, disk full, ...)
• Mostly in „internal form“,
not human readable,
special checks buried
in scripts
• Static Aspects
(how system is built)
• Explicit form,
human readable
• Keep your system
up & running
• Build according to a
specification and prove
compliance with it

25. Additional tools
• Comparable:
rspec-system (! beaker-rspec), rspec-system-serverspec
• Integrate serverspec into vagrant as a provisioner:
github.com/jvoorhis/vagrant-serverspec
• Reporting
http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2014-serverspec-test-
infrastructure.html

27. Infrastructure
QA

28. Infrastructure
regression
testing

29. Automated
acceptance
testing

30. Audit
Capabilities

31. Work
test driven –
Define, build,
compare your
environments.

32. github.com/aschmidt75/serverspecplayground
andreas.schmidt@cassini.de
xing.to/aschmidt
@aschmidt75
?

33. Cassini Consulting
Niederlassung Düsseldorf
Andreas Schmidt
Bennigsen-Platz 1
40474 Düsseldorf
Deutschland
andreas.schmidt@cassini.de
visit www.cassini.de
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