3 AWS Testing Tools for Testing your Amazon Infrastructure

Amid the increasing importance of cloud computing services, cloud testing is also gaining relevance. The main goal of cloud testing is to verify an application’s performance and stability using cloud computing that provides more scalability and flexibility. The cloud allows developers to test functional and non-functional features of the software in less time and with fewer resources.

Companies that work with AWS have two main options: native AWS testing tools or AWS-certified third-party platforms. In this article, we will solely focus on AWS testing services and explore three tools for Quality Assurance.

What AWS Testing Tools and Services are Available?

Let’s look at three vital AWS testing services, their crucial features, and benefits.

AWS Inspector — Security testing tool

Amazon Inspector is at the top of the AWS automated testing tools list as it detects security loopholes in the deployment phase. Evaluating and prioritizing the identified vulnerabilities, AWS Inspector generates automatic reports with explicit data about the findings and corresponding security measures. This Amazon Web testing service offers an easy-to-understand overview of the potential bottlenecks and weaknesses that need to be addressed as early as possible.

Why Amazon Inspector?

• Automate detection of security issues

Amazon Web Services has a set of security standards and best practices that act as benchmarks for applications. AWS Inspector tool checks the system for hidden vulnerabilities in both pre- and post-deployment phases and compiles all the findings in a concise report. The earlier you detect a potential security issue, the less money would be spent on fixing it.

• Adopt DevSecOps

To ensure the ultimate level of security, you need to integrate health checks into your workflow, and DevOps is the best method of achieving this goal. Amazon Inspector is one of the AWS tools for testers that is delivered as a service that facilitates an easier adoption into the existing DevOps process. DevSecOps extends DevOps with QA and entails continuous communication among operational teams, developers, and testers.

Besides ensuring ongoing collaboration between developers and operations, security DevOps delivers automated vulnerability assessments, making QA an integral part of the development and deployment processes.

• Get access to the AWS security expertise

Amazon security and testing providers aim to deliver an extensive knowledge base and best practices to ensure a secure cloud. By continuously assessing and updating their rules and guidelines and creating new AWS tools for testing, Amazon simplifies the adoption of security measures in the cloud. Amazon delivers its top-notch security expertise in the form of a service that is easy to employ and use.

• Ensure security compliance

The costs of non-compliance, especially when it comes to security, can be devastatingly high. Amazon Inspector provides transparency and visibility to the security testing and gives easy access to auditors. AWS guarantees a successful audit by creating transparent processes and thorough documentation that show compliance with standards. Furthermore, you can define and enforce your security standards that are crucial for your organization and industry.

 Read also: AWS management tools.

AWS Device Farm — Automated testing tool

Device Farm is another automated AWS testing tool that allows mass testing across various devices. Instead of creating a complex testing infrastructure with multiple browsers and devices, your company can use these AWS consulting services for testers and set up automated test cases. The test automation service helps you execute your tests concurrently on numerous devices and browsers and immediately receive test results and logs to identify issues.

Why AWS Device Farm?

• Test with real devices instead of emulators

AWS testing tools and services enable testing with real devices instead of emulators that can be highly inaccurate. AWS Device Farm connects you to real devices, thus giving you a deeper understanding of the application performance. Amazon constantly extends the list of the available devices that allows you to incorporate devices’ native features like memory, CPU usage, and other specifics into their test scenarios.

• Approximate the real-world surroundings

AWS Device Farm allows you to adjust various settings like location, network connection, language, etc., and even install other applications on the devices to simulate a realistic customer environment.

• Customize your tests

AWS environment offers customization tools from open-source frameworks like Appium and Espresso that unlock special test cases that are significant to your application.

• Build your private device lab

You can create your own device lab with iOS or Android devices that will be exclusive to your project. AWS Device Farm lets you set the needed configurations and leave them untouched between the testing sessions. This way, you will not be queued to gain access to the devices; on the contrary, they will be available to you at any time.

• Run tests on desktop browsers

AWS Device Farm also offers to execute tests on multiple desktop browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer to evaluate the performance across the browser environments. Moreover, you can run various tests simultaneously, thus saving money due to Amazon’s pay-as-you-go pricing model.

 Read also: AWS DevOps tools.

AWS Fault Injection Simulator — Infrastructure testing tool

Our last tool is Fault Injection Simulator. Built for running fault injection experiments, this testing service helps you drive up the performance and stability of your application.

But what is fault injection? It is a technique commonly used in testing that checks how the system will behave in a stressful and out-of-the-ordinary situation. Fault injections are achieved by creating and running a disrupting scenario that will put the application under stress, such as a rapid spike in user traffic or memory consumption. The created real-world conditions help you uncover hidden bottlenecks that have gone unnoticed with other testing types.

Fault injection provides testers with ready-made templates that cause the desired disruptions and guarantee the results. The automation that Amazon testing tools deliver allows QA teams to delegate some monitoring tasks as the service provides automatic rollbacks in case of failure. On top of that, testers can generate overlapping scenarios when several disruptions occur simultaneously to simulate real-world messiness and make sure the application is bullet-proof.

Why AWS Fault Injection Simulator?

• Identify performance bottlenecks

Amazon Fault Injection service enables verifying your system’s performance, resilience, and visibility through various methods of stressing an application via disruptive events. What traditional test management tools could miss will be uncovered with fault injection scenarios and fixed before deployment takes place.

• Define the conditions of the experiment

Your cloud QA testers can define the breaking points that embody the conditions for experiment interruption. When the predefined conditions are met, the fault injection experiment stops, and the system rolls back to the pre-experiment state.

• Start fast and easy with the short learning curve

AWS tools and services for testers and QA specialists are easy to grasp as they come with predefined templates. Even if you are new to fault injection testing, you will be able to perform the tests by adopting the pre-written structure of the experiment process.

• Simulate real-world conditions

Typically, generating close to reality conditions is tough, but Fault Injection Simulator helps you approximate them. You can tweak the performance of several resources at the same time in the production environment to objectively assess the application behaviour.

 Read also: Serverless monitoring tools

TechMagic’s Expertise

We have introduced you to the top three services and features of AWS for Quality Assurance specialists. However, Amazon Web Services have a lot more to offer when it comes to testing tools. If you would like to learn more about the testing services provided by Amazon or third-party companies via AWS marketplace for QA testing, you can contact our QA team at TechMagic.

As an AWS serverless development company, we have extensive knowledge about cloud testing services and techniques. We can help you integrate continuous testing into your pipeline, eliminate human errors, and automate deployments. In our experience, going through test automation implementation helps companies to validate their current QA processes and improve test accuracy. Finally, test automation services reduces time-to-market and delivers a high-quality product with fewer bugs.

Final Thoughts

Testing is vital to any software development process, remaining an ongoing task even after the release. The modern tools and techniques of application validation can simplify the testing process, shorten time-to-market, keep money in the budget, and enhance product quality. If it sounds enticing, contact the QA specialists at TechMagic to receive AWS consultation services and begin your next error-free project.