Learn general cloud computing concepts along with demonstration
Build knowledge from beginner to advanced level

Introduction to Cloud Computing course covers the cloud basics and advanced topics; therefore can help you in being a cloud practitioner by the end of the course. You will also learn the fundamental cloud computing concepts. The course is ideal for beginners having no prior cloud computing expertise. The course consists of interactive visuals such as diagrams and videos to demonstrate better and ensure that the audience understands concepts.

Rupali Mishra

Software Developer | Engineer

Introduction to Cloud Computing

# Introduction
A cloud-based software testing method involves testing a software application using cloud-based computing services. It is designed to test software for functional as well as non-functional requirements using cloud computing, which ensures faster availability, scalability, and flexibility to save time and money for software testing. 

# Testing- need for it

Cloud testing entails the testing of resources such as hardware, software, and other on-demand resources. It is even referred to as "as a service". For cloud offerings, it is important to ensure that the service (product) not only meets the functional requirements but also the non-functional requirements. As more and more applications move to the cloud, it is now essential to develop a Cloud Testing strategy.





# Benefits of testing

Aside from the many benefits we derive from cloud testing, there is no doubt that cloud testing is needed. As a result, the following are some of the reasons why Cloud computing is the need of the hour:

## Testing environment availability on a dynamic basis
Companies normally invest in the hardware and software infrastructure required for testing. Almost all of you will agree that the testing environment supplied to the teams very rarely matches the customer's environment due to rapidly changing requirements, as a result of which it is very tough for the companies to maintain. A cloud-based solution can be used to replicate a customer environment and find defects early in the development cycle.

## Low cost 
Another aspect of the previous point is that when companies invest in the infrastructure, many of their servers are not always utilized. Therefore, they may incur additional costs when renewing their licenses. The cloud also helps in this scenario, as users can commission appliances as needed, thereby saving huge amounts of money for an organization.

## Easily customizable
With the use of the cloud, it's an easy task for organizations to emulate an end-user-centric environment by customizing it according to their usage, thereby saving money and time. Various permutations and combinations, such as different OSs, browsers, configurations, etc., can be easily performed by testing teams.

## Scalability 
The cloud provides scalability - the ability to increase or decrease computing resources at any time. This is one of the most attractive aspects of the cloud. Companies use this when their business requirements keep changing frequently.

# What needs to be tested?
When it comes to cloud deployment testing plans, keep in mind what they are. They are a plan to evaluate and ensure the deployment meets our requirements. Therefore, we start with requirements, build a plan, then evaluate it, linking it back to make sure we did not miss anything in those requirements.

- What do we want to test, what do we want to consider for testing in our deployment plan? We want to test shared components like storage, compute, network. Do we have the storage we need, compute we need, the network we need? 
- We have production versus development versus quality assurance (QA) environments. We develop in one environment before we finally go to production, then pass off the code to Quality Assurance, where people can test it, also known as a beta platform. Once everything is proven, we can move from that to production.
- We also have to consider automation and orchestration in our deployment testing plan. We consider whether automation is included and optimize the deployment by utilizing automation.

## Performance test factors

What are some performance test factors? 
We want to test sizing. We need to ensure that our storage space is sufficient and have enough memory, such as volume or sizing. We have to make sure CPU performance is up to par because certainly we can use the lowest capable processing instance in AWS, for example, and deploy a Windows server. Still, it will not perform well for one hundred users are accessing it. So we need to make sure that we have the required CPU performance. Read-write performance for storage is not just about volume or size; it is also about reads and writes. So we need to make sure they are up to par. And then, we also need to do the same for network performance to get the throughput I demand. All of these things should be included in our testing to ensure they perform as they should.

## Access test factors

What are some access test factors? These are the things that should be in our test plan related to accessing the resources. First of all, the connectivity. Can we connect to these things? Do we have a plan to test that? We put an instance out there. Can the devices that need to connect to that instance connect to it. Then there is high availability. Can they connect to it when they need it? 
- Availability means it is there when we need it, we may need 99.99 percent uptime from nine to five, but we may not need anything close to 10 percent uptime for the rest of the time, every day. So we need to know when we need it to be there. Moreover, high availability is defined as when we need it.
- Load balancing helps distribute the load among multiple servers. It is the process of getting data copied to multiple locations and keeping it synchronized at those various locations. So if we need to implement that, our test plan should analyze it to ensure that the servers are being balanced and that it is using more than one server replication. We have to make sure there is a test to verify that the data is replicated.
- And then there is just proper function, a capability that people need of that cloud service. Is the capability working? If our cloud deployment does not work, it does not matter that it performs well. So proper function is critical, and then data integrity. We need to make sure that the data we are creating in the cloud and saving is not corrupted somehow and that it is not being altered by other processes such that it is not the data we need it to be. There is a lot more involved in that process.

We have to ensure the right users can manage it and know what they are doing. They do not accidentally make a change. It definitely could be what it should be, and we can enforce that through technology.

We have a testing plan in place that's either provided to us or built ourselves, so we need to evaluate that testing plan and make sure that it allows us to deploy what we need to deploy in the cloud.

Testing Techniques and Evaluation of Testing Plan

Introduction

Testing- need for it

Benefits of testing

Testing environment availability on a dynamic basis

Low cost