Regardless of whether you are new to DevOps or have been here for a while, you are probably aware that it has become absolutely critical for businesses to adopt test automation in DevOps to remain competitive.
Testing automation makes your job much easier and less error-prone.
However, with so many DevOps testing tools available on the market today, it can be hard to decide which ones are worth investing. To help you get started, we put together this list of great tools that can serve as starting points for automating various tasks in your DevOps workflow testing.
Related: Implementing the agile manifesto in software development
Tools you’ll need for test automation in DevOps
Test automation is a way to speed up the testing process. In DevOps, test automation is used to test:
- Software
- Hardware
- Infrastructure
The tools that are suitable for test automation should be flexible enough to adapt to changes in technology and processes. They should also be able to keep up with DevOps practices such as automated deployments and parallelization.
Below is the list of tools that can speed up and automate your DevOps workflow.
1. Jenkins
First on our list of tools for automating DevOps testing is Jenkins. This is an open-source automation server that is made for continuous integration and delivery. Jenkins is a web-based application, and you can access it from anywhere. This DevOps testing tool can be installed on your local machine or in the cloud.
Jenkins comes pre-configured with many plugins, including some that can help with DevOps testing and automation tools. The most popular ones are:
- GitHub pull requests
- Maven build
- TestNG test execution
2. Vagrant
Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual development environments. It is the perfect companion to test automation in DevOps because it allows you to create an isolated virtual machine (VM) without installing software on your local machine.
Vagrant is developed to create and configure virtual machines, which are known as "boxes."
3. Kobiton
Kobiton is a cloud-based testing platform for testing mobile apps. The platform works across different devices, operating systems, and browsers.
Kobiton allows you to set up automated tests and run them in parallel across multiple devices for easy comparison of results.
This tool can help you detect issues in your app before it reaches the hands of users by providing more realistic simulation environments for mobile testing.
4. ZapTest
Zaptest is a cloud-based DevOps testing platform that makes it possible to create, execute, and manage automated tests from the cloud.
It's a great DevOps testing tool because it has its own built-in scripting language called ZAPT (ZapTest Automation Protocol), as well as an API that supports REST/JSON.
With these features, you can effortlessly run your scripts on one of the many supported browsers or devices without having to worry about installing any additional software on your local machine. You can also use ZAPT with other tools like Selenium IDE.
Related: Why using Web APIs is important
5. mabl
With a free cloud-based option and cross-platform support, mabl is great for testing both iOS and Android apps. It's also lightweight, so you can use it on low-powered devices like the Raspberry Pi.
Below mentioned features of mabl help to make it stand out:
- It comes with built-in test templates that you can customize to your needs.
- You can run tests in real-time using mabl's online simulator.
- You can write code snippets in JavaScript, Python, or Swift to automate your testing process.
6. Bamboo
Atlassian’s Bamboo is a continuous integration tool often used for DevOps testing. It performs the automatic build, test, and release and supports many technologies and languages like:
- Ducker
- Git
- SVN
- Mercurial
- Amazon S3 buckets
7. Selenium
Our final suggestion for DevOps testing automation is Selenium. This is one of the most popular automated testing tools specifically designed to support automation testing of a wide range of browsers.
Selenium supports parallel testing, reducing the time taken in test execution. Selenium also needs fewer resources when compared to other automated testing tools.
DevOps testing tools and their advantages
Test automation is the use of software to execute tests. It can be used to reduce the cost of software testing.
Test automation helps improve quality by executing more tests in less time.
By using a test automation tool, you can create automated scripts that will run through your software’s features and verify if they are functioning correctly or not.
Automation tools have several advantages including:
Timely execution
Test automation reduces the time for test execution.
It helps in reducing the time for manual regression testing by a significant amount.
Also, the automated tests have high accuracy rates, which means that new functionality can be tested in less time than manual testing processes.
Efficiency
Test automation is more efficient than manual testing.
With test automation, you can run the same tests repeatedly without waiting for people to get resources together and do them manually.
Automated tests can also answer questions about how a system behaves under certain conditions much faster than humans.
It makes them ideal for regression testing or checking that new features have not broken anything else in the system.
Test automation can help you achieve the same quality that manual testing does, while allowing you to test more things at once (or faster).
Reduced costs and efforts
Test automation reduces the cost of testing.
By automating tests, you can run them faster and at a lower cost than manual testers. This is because automated tests don't require much human intervention during test execution. Automated testing can be executed on-demand to meet fluctuating demand for software quality assurance.
Test automation reduces the time to implement new features.
Since automated tests have no dependence on manual testing efforts, they are quicker to create than manual ones.
Automated tests also provide more information about how your product should behave before it's released into production. Comprehensive testing helps you build better products faster with less risk involved.
Improve your DevOps workflow
I hope you find this post useful to improve your DevOps testing practices. Test automation helps in achieving desired test coverage. It ensures that every area in the application is tested and no part of the application is left untested. Test automation helps software testers to execute tests with high precision, efficiency and accuracy.
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