How to test software which should reliably work in a variety of complex environments?

While testing software products that are locally installed on workstations and servers, it is crucially important to take into account different environment settings on the user side. These are tens of thousands of combinations that influence the work and performance of an application.  

Preparations for a high-quality software product release, bug reproductions, and debug simulations run by a software development department are a time- and resource-consuming process. It includes environment and parameter setup as well as additional installation of the systems which a software product can integrate with or which, in their turn, can integrate with a software product.  

Virtual machines make testers’ life much easier. Using predefined environment sets enables switching between virtual machines while running test cases and testing fixed bugs.  At the same time, with the help of the environment created for reproducing the problems which users can face, it is easy to verify fixed bugs and share information with developers and end-users. It leads to significant time saving both for testers and developers as there’s no need to install and set up an instance of the environment in which a defect has been reported. 

In my publication on Medium at https://medium.com/@polytech_software/using-virtual-machines-for-testing-software-in-a-variety-of-complex-environments-c80dc5b03a69 you will find out more about the usage of virtual machines for testing software in complex environments.