The Truth About Production Testing
Testing on production environments is something you must do but really, really would prefer not to do, right? You can do some incredible damage in a short amount of time if you aren't careful, and when things do run smoothly, you think to yourself "Why even take the risk? I should just do this on the staging server and call it a day!" Well, you can't get around automated and manual testing on production, and this image seems to represent what it feels like to do testing on production:
That's the first bulletproof vests being tested ... on a living human being. If you don't see the parallel between that photo and production testing, you don't have a sense of humor. Tread lightly when testing on production, people: you could end up shooting yourself down quickly!
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Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...
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This was a great little warning first thing in the morning. :) Thanks for the joke!
Not sure why they can’t use a pig to test that vest.
Also, if we can run full copy of production server for tests (and with copy of production DB), why not use it? Some external API can’t be copied (so we should consider about mocks instead of real payment gateways), but most “damage” usually goes to our DB, so I think it’s worth it. And it’s relatively cheap, if you use services with per-use payments.
I’ts not advisable to do any testing on a production server. They should be done on the development server. Thanks for this piece.