Test Environment for software testing

Test Bed
Test Bed is a kind of development environment where developers have the freedom to test their modules without any interference from the testing team.But test bed is not confined to the development team, testing team can also perform testing on the test bed.
Test Environment
Test Environment is hardware and software setup created for testing team to execute test cases.Test Environment is created as per the need for the application under test.

Key areas to set up in Test Environment:
Hardware
Test Data
Database Server
Front-end running environment

Process of Software Test Environment setup
People involved in test environment setup
System Admin
Developers
Testers
Setup of Test Server
Every test cannot be executed on the local machine.For that, a test server should be established.eg: Fedora setup for PHP,cron job setup etc.
Network
1)Internet setup
2)LAN setup
3)Private network setup
Test PC setup
For web testing, different browsers have to be set up for different testers.
Bug Reporting
Bug reporting tools should be provided to the testers to log the bugs came at the time of testing.
Creating Test Data for the Test Environment
Every company uses a separate test environment to test the application.A common approach used is to copy the production data to the test data.
Approach to copy production data to test data:
1)Create production jobs to copy the data to test environment
2)Removal of irrelevant data
3)All sensitive data should be modified.
Testers or developers can copy this to their environment.Data can be modified as per the requirement.

Challenges faced while set-up test environment:
1)Remote Environment
The test environment is placed in remote areas.This is most commonly faced challenges for test team as in case of any problem they need to rely on support teams to solve the problem.Also if some asset needs an upgrade again test team need the help of support team.This occurs some delay in the testing time.
2)Proper planning on resource usage
Mostly development team and the testing team uses same assets.And if assets are used on same time, this will create chaos and disagreement in the team.
3)Complex test configuration
Test environment setup can be too complex.This will create some problems for the testing team as they required several skills to understand the configurations.
4)Shared usage by teams
If the testing environment is used by both development team and the testing team simultaneously , then test results can be corrupted.

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