Cheap Dedicated Server -Management, Software installation and configuration

Software installation and configuration

Installation testing is a kind of quality assurance work in the software industry that focuses on what customers will need to do to install and set up the new software successfully. The testing process may involve full, partial or upgrades install/uninstall processes All the client system installation used in the dedicated server.

This testing is typically done by the software testing engineer in conjunction with the configuration manager. Implementation testing is usually defined as testing which places a compiled version of code into the testing or pre-production environment, from which it may or may not progress into production. This generally takes place outside of the software development environment to limit code corruption from other future or past releases (or from the use of the wrong version of dependencies such as shared libraries) which may reside on the development environment.

The simplest installation approach is to run an install program, sometimes called package software. This package software typically uses a setup program which acts as a multi-configuration wrapper and which may allow the software to be installed on a variety of machine and/or operating environments. Every possible configuration should receive an appropriate level of testing so that it can be released to customers with confidence.

In distributed systems, particularly where software is to be released into an already live target environment (such as an operational website) installation (or software deployment as it is sometimes called) can involve database schema changes as well as the installation of new software. Deployment plans in such circumstances may include back-out procedures whose use is intended to roll the target environment back if the deployment is unsuccessful. Ideally, the deployment plan itself should be tested in an environment that is a replica of the live environment. A factor that can increase the organizational requirements of such an exercise is the need to synchronize the data in the test deployment environment with that in the live environment with minimum disruption to live operation. This type of implementation may include testing of the processes which take place during the installation or upgrade of a multi-tier application. This type of testing is commonly compared to a dress rehearsal or may even be called a “dry run”.

In software engineering, software configuration management (SCM) is the task of tracking and controlling changes in the software. Configuration management practices include revision control and the establishment of baselines.

SCM concerns itself with answering the question "Somebody did something, how can one reproduce it?" Often the problem involves not reproducing "it" identically, but with controlled, incremental changes. Answering the question thus becomes a matter of comparing different results and of analysing their differences. Traditional configuration management typically focused on controlled creation of relatively simple products. Now, implementers of SCM face the challenge of dealing with relatively minor increments under their own control, in the context of the complex system being developed. According to another simple definition: Software Configuration Management is how you control the evolution of a software project.
Terminology

The history and terminology of SCM (which often varies) has given rise to controversy. Roger Pressman, in his book Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, states that SCM "is a set of activities designed to control change by identifying the work products that are likely to change, establishing relationships among them, defining mechanisms for managing different versions of these work products, controlling the changes imposed, and auditing and reporting on the changes made."

Source configuration management is a related practice often used to indicate that a variety of artifacts may be managed and versioned, including software code, hardware, documents, design models, and even the directory structure itself.

Atria (later Rational Software, now a part of IBM), used "SCM" to mean "software configuration management". Gartner and Forrester Research use the term software change and configuration management.

Purposes:
The goals of SCM are generally:

    Configuration identification - Identifying configurations, configuration items and baselines.
    Configuration control - Implementing a controlled change process. This is usually achieved by setting up a change control board whose primary function is to approve or reject all change requests that are sent against any baseline.
    Configuration status accounting - Recording and reporting all the necessary information on the status of the development process.
    Configuration auditing - Ensuring that configurations contain all their intended parts and are sound with respect to their specifying documents, including requirements, architectural specifications and user manuals.
    Build management - Managing the process and tools used for builds.
    Process management - Ensuring adherence to the organization's development process.
    Environment management - Managing the software and hardware(server) that host the system.
    Teamwork - Facilitate team interactions related to the process.
    Defect tracking - Making sure every defect has traceability back to the source.


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