Sixty-five percent of developers say it’s too complicated and time-consuming to get dev-test resources.* It doesn’t have to be.
This blog series will provide guidance on setting up dev-test environments with the help of the Microsoft cloud so that you can get the most out of dev-test in minutes—not hours or days.
Creating dev-test environments that mimic production often present challenges due to scalability and complexity, especially for hybrid applications and workloads.
Azure makes it easy to create a cross-premises virtual network that connects to and extends your on-premises network (see our previous blog entry for resources to help you create a cloud-only virtual network).
Azure offers a new set of hybrid cloud test environments for you to create. You can simulate a real hybrid production environment for dev-test in Azure by following the step-by-step instructions to set up a hybrid cloud environment for testing. The hybrid environment uses your local Internet connection and one of your public IP addresses to set up a functioning, cross-premises Azure virtual network. You create the simplified intranet portion of this configuration with three computers on an isolated subnet, which you can host on a single Hyper-V or other virtualization server.
You can expand or adapt this base configuration to create dev-test environments or proof-of-concept configurations for hybrid cloud-based IT workloads. This is a great way to experiment with Azure features, perform application development and testing, experiment with simplified IT workloads, and gauge the performance of a site-to-site VPN connection relative to your location on the Internet.
If you do not have a direct Internet connection or available public IP address, as an alternative, you can also create a simulated hybrid cloud. Follow these step-by-step instructions to set up a simulated hybrid cloud environment for testing. This configuration uses only Azure infrastructure components to create the simplified intranet in an additional Azure virtual network (VNet) and then links the two with a VNet-to-VNet connection. This configuration does not give you the experience of a true cross-premises virtual network, but you can still use it to perform dev-test functions and run simplified IT workloads.
Look for the next post in the Dev-Test Starts with IT series about setting up a SharePoint farm in a hybrid cloud for testing.
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Learn more about dev-test on Azure.
*Source: Business Case for Test Environment Management Whitepaper, Cognizant
