The importance of performing cloud-based testing

Cloud-based testing consists of verifying fundamental points that guarantee the security of companies when adopting cloud computing. The testing processes seek to verify items such as performance, scalability, reliability, among others.

Compared with an environment composed of a local architecture, cloud-based tests have the main difference in the fact that we have a virtualized and shared environment. This is because concerns such as performance, response time, security, among other quality criteria, are common goals on any platform.

Given this, the importance of testing in the cloud raises the level of importance by considering variables that are often not under the control of the company contracting the cloud service. Virtualization and sharing should be factored into the evaluation criteria.

>> Learn more: The future of companies goes through cloud computing

Cloud-based testing goes beyond verifying applications

The concept applied to testing is often associated with just checking, through different types of testing strategies, functionalities and performance of applications hosted on a cloud structure.

The IT team needs to go far beyond the quality standards applied in testing processes. In a cloud environment, the architecture makes us think about the following situations:

• Running virtualized hardware on a software stack that can be moved or replicated between physical machines as needed.
• The sharing of common physical resources with other cloud applications (disk, network, data storage, etc.).
• They are architectures built to be highly scalable in real-time, meaning they can handle increased loads, dynamically scaling to more physical resources as needed.
• APIs are used for integration and management, possibly available to users or third-party application providers.

Therefore, they are very common characteristics of a cloud architecture, and which must be taken into account by quality professionals when thinking about cloud-based tests. These are details that make all the difference when thinking about a production environment and whose main requirement is high availability.

>> Learn more: 3 essential tips for a cloud migration project

Quality criteria for cloud-based testing

Given the characteristics of the technology, the quality criteria applied to software and infrastructure tests, which are the same when executed in a traditional environment, now receive special attention when applied in the cloud.

performance criteria

Applications that run in a cloud, as stated earlier, run on hardware that you may not have control over and that they share with other applications. Therefore, ensuring the required performance and scalability is extremely important. Be sure to test performance in a cloud environment similar to what you will be using in production.

Security Criteria

Since cloud applications often share resources and infrastructure with others, you should have additional consideration for data privacy and access control issues.

>> Learn more: Information security a continuous and participative process

Third party dependencies

Cloud apps are likely to consume external APIs and services to provide some of their functionality. You should consider testing and monitoring them as if they were part of your own solution.

As with other technologies, standards are needed, which serve as a basis for defining quality criteria and sufficient tests to guarantee the environment used in the cloud.
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