A presentation given at 2014 Selenium Conference in Bangalore talks about common steps to help set up and manage a Selenium Grid environment.

1. Scaling and Managing Selenium
Grid
Dima Kovalenko
@dimacus

2. • Note to self, this slide should be completely
blank, NO TEXT of any sort!

4. Shameless Plug
ISBN: 9781783982707
https://www.packtpub.com/web-development/selenium-design-patterns-and-best-practices

6. Explaining Grid
• Dumb Nodes

7. Explaining Grid
• Dumb Nodes
• Even Dumber Hub

8. Hub is a Glorified Proxy Server
• HUB is an HTTP Proxy
• That tracks node count
– Does not know much else about nodes

9. Getting Priorities Right
• Stability
• Speed
• Coverage

10. Stability
• Become a Sys Admin

11. Stability
• Become a Sys Admin
• Move as much to Linux as possible

12. Stability
• Become a Sys Admin
• Move as much to Linux as possible
• Only 1 test at the time!
- At least for
IE
Safari

13. Stability
• Become a Sys Admin
• Move as much to Linux as possible
• Only 1 test at the time!
- Shared resources at OS level

14. Stability
• Become a Sys Admin
• Move as much to Linux as possible
• Only 1 test at the time!
• Configuration as code
– Git
– Chef
– Puppet

15. Configuration Management
• Node Configs
– Grid Hub Configs
– Grid Node Configs
– Store In Git

16. Configuration Management
• Node Configs
– Grid Hub Configs
– Grid Node Configs
– Store In Git
• OS Configs
– Crons
– Versions
• Browsers
• Java
• Etc..

17. Speed
• Smaller Nodes
– Better to have 10 computers with 1 browser
• It’s ok to use low end machines

18. Speed
• Smaller Nodes
– Better to have 10 computers with 1 browser
• It’s ok to use low end machines
– Take performance hit in place of faster run time

19. Coverage
• Can we add IE6 and 7 to the Grid?

20. Coverage

21. Coverage
• More maintenance
• IE8 takes 50% of free time
• IE9 or > is much Safer to use

22. International Buy Jim Evans a BEER
day!

23. International Buy Jim Evans a BEER
day!

25. International Buy Jim Evans a BEER
day!

27. More On Stability
• Don’t Use RC
– java -jar selenium.jar -role node

28. More On Stability
• Don’t Use RC
• Use WebDriver
–java -jar selenium.jar -role wd

29. More On Stability
• Replace Internet Explorer with Batch file
• Create Crons (Scheduled Tasks)
– Periodically Restart Grid node (JAR)
– Periodically Restart Computer

30. More On Stability
• Replace Internet Explorer with Batch file
– Cleans up Cookies, Cache, etc
– Launches Internet Explorere

31. More On Stability
• Replace Internet Explorer with Batch file
• Create Crons (Scheduled Tasks)
• Auto login & Auto Start at login
– Always auto login with the Build User

32. More On Stability
• Replace Internet Explorer with Batch file
• Create Crons (Scheduled Tasks)
• Auto login & Auto Start at login
• Etc.. Etc.. Etc..

33. Selenium Grid Extras
• 1 year old

34. Selenium Grid Extras
• https://github.com/groupon/Selenium-Grid-
Extras

35. Goal of the Project
• Document Grid Stability with code

36. Goal of the Project
• Document Grid Stability with code
– (Poorly written Java code that is)
• Make the setup and maintenance of the grid
simple

37. Features to improve stability
• Automatically Set IE Protected Security Zone
each reboot
• Move the mouse out of the way
• Kill web browser after Test
• Kill chromedriver.exe and iedriver.exe after
build
• Automatically update Drivers and JARS
• Store config for all nodes in single place

38. Latest Features
• Restart node every X builds, when node is free
• Jenkins Plugin
• Video recording of test (Work in progress)

39. Optionally Reboot OS
• Windows reboot not optional!
• Improves speed and test stability
• Prevents this:

41. Video Recording
• (Work in Progress)

42. Demo

43. Jenkins Plugin
• (Work in Progress)

45. Find IE Crashes at a Glance

46. Questions?