85%
reduction in time to market for QA
95%
faster environment setup
60%
cost reduction
Accelerating Pre-Production Testing for Faster Time to Market
Ensuring that a product is thoroughly tested before moving to production is crucial for every product, regardless of the industry segment. The traditional approach of setting up staging environments if often time-consuming and resource-intensive, leading to delays in product testing and deployment. The need for a quick, cost-effective solution to streamline the staging environment setup was paramount.
The Challenge: Establishing a Fast and Cost-Effective Staging Environment
Need for rapid and automated environment setup and teardown.
Eliminating manual intervention in environment provisioning/deprovisioning and testing to reduce time to market.
Minimizing costs associated with pre-production testing.
The customer required a staging environment that could be quickly set up for testing releases before deploying to production. The solution needed to be fully automated, reducing the dependency on manual processes and enabling the development team to manage the environment independently without involving QA testers or the operations team.
Implementing End-to-End Automation for Staging Environments
The key components of the solution included:
1-Click Solution: A single-click deployment process was created to automate the provisioning of the staging environment in an AWS account, ensuring quick and efficient setup.
Automated Provisioning with Terraform: The environment setup was automated using Terraform, allowing for consistent and repeatable infrastructure provisioning in AWS.
Automated Deployment with Kustomize and ArgoCD: Applications were deployed automatically using Kustomize and ArgoCD on Amazon EKS, ensuring that the staging environment mirrored the production setup.
Automated Testing with Selenium: Test suites were executed automatically using Selenium web drivers, facilitating thorough and continuous testing without manual intervention.
Automated Environment Deletion: The environment was automatically deleted after testing, optimizing resource usage and reducing costs.
Deploying an Automated Staging Environment in Hours
Over a brief period, the client implemented an end-to-end automated solution that enabled rapid staging environment setup, focusing on:
One-Click Provisioning: Developed a 1-click solution to automate the entire provisioning process, making it quick and user-friendly.
Automated Infrastructure Provisioning: Leveraged Terraform to automate the setup of the staging environment in AWS, ensuring a consistent and repeatable process.
Automated Application Deployment: Integrated Kustomize and ArgoCD to automate the deployment of applications on Amazon EKS, ensuring that the staging environment replicated the production setup.
Automated Testing Execution: Used Selenium web drivers to automatically run test suites, facilitating comprehensive and continuous testing without manual effort.
Environment Lifecycle Management: Automated the deletion of the staging environment after testing, optimizing resource usage and reducing operational costs.
The implementation of the staging environment yielded remarkable results:
85%
reduction in time to market, the automated process reduced the time required for QA from days to just a few hours, enabling faster product testing and deployment.
95%
faster environment setup, staging environments were ready in under two hours for quick pre-production testing.
60%
cost reduction, automated environment lifecycle management minimized costs by efficiently managing resources and reducing manual intervention.
Lessons Learned
Automation accelerates processes: Implementing automated solutions drastically reduces the time and effort required for staging environment setup.
Consistency and efficiency: Automated provisioning ensures a consistent environment setup, reducing the potential for errors and improving efficiency.
Cost savings: Automating the lifecycle management of staging environments helps optimize resource usage and reduce operational costs.
Conclusion
A Blueprint for Automated Staging Environment Setup
This case study highlights the successful implementation of an automated, cost-effective staging environment solution that accelerates pre-production testing and reduces time to market. The end-to-end automation approach provides a model for future projects, demonstrating the value of leveraging automated solutions to enhance operational efficiency and achieve rapid deployment.
Tools & Technologies
