Developer, Development and Virtualization

In my blog:

I mentioned several blogs by friends of mine, and I pointed out that the virtualization is one way that a developer can perform testing without cratering their environment.  However, it dawned on me that a developer could also use Test Manager see:

Now Test Manager can easily set up a reproducible test environment, as well as the following things:

  • Automatically capture extensible and rich diagnostic information like IntelliTrace logs, indexed videos, and screenshots for each new bug
  • Tight integration with Team Foundation Server provides in-context collaboration between all team roles
  • Task-driven user interface and features like Fast Forward for Manual Testing let you focus on high-value tasks
  • Increases your visibility to the overall project while providing full traceability of user stories and requirements, progress reports, and real-time quality metrics
  • Built-in capability to collect Test Impact data lets you access a list of recommended tests due to code changes and know which bugs are addressed in a given build
  • Plus a 12-month subscription to MSDN and more

Now how does this compare to doing your own virtualization?  Well, if you have the operating systems, then there is no cost.  Take a look at this blog:

https://blogs.technet.com/b/chrisavis/archive/2012/02/10/passing-the-windows-server-2008-r2-server-virtualization-exam-70-659-part-5-i-m-a-developer-why-virtualize.aspx

It’s up to you, and there are good reasons to do both.  If you got the bucks go with Test manager, but to be smart, you still need to take the certification exam for virtualization.