Re: [staf-devel] STAF in a network test env

[Jeffrey F. <jef...@sy...>]

Charles,

Hopefully this will add some clarity to my question:

The primary problem that I am attempting to address with STAF is the 
ability to run a suite of tests where a portion of those tests take place 
on one machine and a portion of them are executed on a second machine. I'd 
also like to scale this such that multiple machines could be tested in 
this manner at the same time.

Thank you for your help!

Best Regards,
Jeff




Charles Rankin <ra...@us...> 
04/05/2004 11:21 AM

To
Jeffrey Freeman <jef...@sy...>
cc
sta...@li...
Subject
Re: [staf-devel] STAF in a network test env







sta...@li... wrote on 04/05/2004 11:35:00 AM:
> 
> I am curious if STAF would be able to solve the following test 
> automation problem: 
> 
> Execute tests against firewall software on several machines, where 
> some tests execute on the machine with the firewall and others 
> execute on another machine that sends packets.  None of the 
> executing applications are Java based and some of those applications
> are Visual Test scripts. 
> 
> Any help is appreciated!  I've read through a great deal of STAF 
> documentation but I haven't determined if this STAF would lend 
> itself well to this problem. 

I think the general answer is yes.  The STAF Process service can be 
used to start any process on a remote system.  You should be able to 
launch your Visual Test scripts from the command line without much 
effort.  Once you know how to execute all your tests, you can either 
create your own script directly invoking STAF to orchestrate them, or 
you can use STAX to manage that for you.  The latter gives you 
additional benefits over a hand-written approach, such as parallel 
execution, timing constraints, job controls, as well as a distributed 
graphical monitoring application. 

Now, having said all that, it's not clear to me whether all the 
systems are on the same side of the firewall.  If there, things are 
easy.  If they aren't, there is probably a little more work in order. 

If there are on different sides of the firewall, then, if you aren't 
using NAT routing, then you can probably just open up STAF's port, 
6500, and things will be ok.  If you are using NAT (or can't open up 
the port), then you may have to "delegate" the process requests on 
the other side of the firewall via a "helper" on the firewall, 
assuming this is a software firewall and not a firewall device.  The 
easiest way to do this would be to create a little service that you 
can send requests to which will then start the processes on the other 
side (I'm assuming the firewall system has access to both sides of 
the firewall).  If you aren't comfortable creating a service, you 
could just write a little program that accepts messages on its STAF 
queue and then starts the processes based on the data on the queue. 

I hope this helps.  Post again, if you need clarifications or have 
more questions. 

Charles Rankin