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We are a medium sized shop that uses Puppet for Linux configuration management. Since we are a small shop, it's difficult to deploy and maintain DTAP environment.

We normally perform manual testing after configuration changes. I would like to automate that somehow; like you would see in software regression testing for e.g..

An e.g. use-case would be an OpenLDAP cluster. I would:

  1. I would make a change on a test node in the Puppet test environment
  2. Test services
  3. If fail, go back to to step 1
  4. Remove a node from the cluster
  5. Make the configuration change
  6. Test services
  7. If fail, go back to step 5
  8. Add node back to cluster
  9. Test services
  10. If fail, go back to step 4
  11. Finally, deploy to other nodes

Ideally, I'd like to automate the testing so we could deploy changes with more confidence.

Can anyone recommend such a thing? Preferably something that hooks into Puppet but not necessarily a requirement. Some suggestions on best practice would also be appreciated.

Belmin Fernandez
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    Acceptance testing spanning multiple test nodes is what `beaker` is for, see https://github.com/puppetlabs/beaker. It allows you to define test scenarios that are run on (groups of) throwaway virtual machines. – Felix Frank Jun 17 '14 at 11:43
  • @FelixFrank, shouldn't that be an answer? – François Beausoleil Jun 18 '14 at 19:44
  • @FrançoisBeausoleil well, for lack of personal experience, I can really add no further information at all. Since the question is quite specific, I feel that the link doesn't qualify as a full answer. Just a helpful pointer. Hope someone will speak up and elaborate. - But thanks for the encouragement :-) – Felix Frank Jun 18 '14 at 22:08
  • @FelixFrank please submit as an answer. This was exactly what I needed. – Belmin Fernandez May 06 '15 at 23:46
  • @BelminFernandez OK fine ;-) – Felix Frank May 07 '15 at 09:14

1 Answers1

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The designated tool that meets the described requirements is Beaker. It will allow the creation of acceptance test scenarios like the one that was sketched in the question.

Felix Frank
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