Skip to main content

Automation Starts with Testing

Dennis Damen
Login VSI

There is no doubt that automation has become the key aspect of modern IT management.

The end-user computing market is no exception. With a large and complex technology stack and a huge number of applications, EUC specialists need to handle an ever-increasing number of changes at an ever-increasing rate.

Many IT organizations are starting to realize that they can no longer control the flow of changes. It is time to think about how to facilitate change.

Speeding Up Change

Automation is essential in speeding up the delivery of change in more than one way. I frequently hear people talking about how they wish they could reduce the number of repetitive tasks or speed up their ability to deploy. While these are most assuredly benefits of automation, they are certainly not the only ones.

My personal favorite is the consistency with which you can maintain your systems and repeatedly generate the same results. Having a consistent environment makes testing, troubleshooting, and even root cause analysis much more effective.

It feels liberating when you are confident that you can build consistent virtual desktop platforms and golden images with the press of a button. You can now direct your full focus on preparing, testing, and deploying changes.

Fail Faster

As any software engineer will tell you; if you want to speed up your development and get your number of support calls down, you need to get your testing in order. "Test-Driven Development" even states that you should write tests before you write your code.

I remember learning the hard way. We did not think we would need to test a simple Microsoft security fix before automatically deploying it to production. What could go wrong? Surely Microsoft would test their hotfixes … right? This simple security fix brought down a 5,000 user Citrix XenApp Farm. And, as I am sure you realize, restoring it felt like it took forever.

The point is that the sooner you find out a change is going to cause you (performance) issues, the faster you can fix them and prevent time-consuming repairs afterwards.

There's a solution for end-user computing experts who are serious about speeding up their change process while delivering exceptional end-user experience: testing the impact of planned changes on performance and compatibility in pre-production and catching disruptions due to unplanned changes early in production.

We want to hear your experiences with change — the good, the bad AND the ugly. What were your worst problems and how did you solve them? Don't hesitate to get in touch with us!

Dennis Damen is Sr. Product Manager at Login VSI

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

Automation Starts with Testing

Dennis Damen
Login VSI

There is no doubt that automation has become the key aspect of modern IT management.

The end-user computing market is no exception. With a large and complex technology stack and a huge number of applications, EUC specialists need to handle an ever-increasing number of changes at an ever-increasing rate.

Many IT organizations are starting to realize that they can no longer control the flow of changes. It is time to think about how to facilitate change.

Speeding Up Change

Automation is essential in speeding up the delivery of change in more than one way. I frequently hear people talking about how they wish they could reduce the number of repetitive tasks or speed up their ability to deploy. While these are most assuredly benefits of automation, they are certainly not the only ones.

My personal favorite is the consistency with which you can maintain your systems and repeatedly generate the same results. Having a consistent environment makes testing, troubleshooting, and even root cause analysis much more effective.

It feels liberating when you are confident that you can build consistent virtual desktop platforms and golden images with the press of a button. You can now direct your full focus on preparing, testing, and deploying changes.

Fail Faster

As any software engineer will tell you; if you want to speed up your development and get your number of support calls down, you need to get your testing in order. "Test-Driven Development" even states that you should write tests before you write your code.

I remember learning the hard way. We did not think we would need to test a simple Microsoft security fix before automatically deploying it to production. What could go wrong? Surely Microsoft would test their hotfixes … right? This simple security fix brought down a 5,000 user Citrix XenApp Farm. And, as I am sure you realize, restoring it felt like it took forever.

The point is that the sooner you find out a change is going to cause you (performance) issues, the faster you can fix them and prevent time-consuming repairs afterwards.

There's a solution for end-user computing experts who are serious about speeding up their change process while delivering exceptional end-user experience: testing the impact of planned changes on performance and compatibility in pre-production and catching disruptions due to unplanned changes early in production.

We want to hear your experiences with change — the good, the bad AND the ugly. What were your worst problems and how did you solve them? Don't hesitate to get in touch with us!

Dennis Damen is Sr. Product Manager at Login VSI

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...