Virtual testing for IT ops

  Most of the problems that happen to smooth-running IT operations do so after you make a change to your production system. Any change. An operating system or security patch. A router or server configuration shift. An application upgrade. Anything new is likely to be the culprit when things go wrong. You know that. That's why IT shops often invest in test systems that exactly mimic ones in production. "Often" is the key word in that sentence. According to Jonah Paransky, vice president of marketing at StackSafe Inc. in Vienna, Va., "Companies just don't do it." That's because keeping your test system in sync with your production environment takes too much time, staff and money. So, he says, with the exception of precious few organizations, testing changes is not done as rigorously as it should be.

It's not surprising that StackSafe claims it can assist you in building a test environment to validate the changes you make on the production side. The StackSafe Test Center, says  Andrew Gross, chief scientist, uses virtualization, specifically the Xen Hypervisor, to build a virtual testing world that lets you import your "entire production system" with a simple mouse click. Test Center comes with a range of tests so you can see how changes affect everything from performance to reliability. Paransky says today Test Center works with Linux-based applications, but by mid-February it will also encompass Windows 2003 environments with more to come. Subscription pricing starts at $50,000 per year.