I'm using the ServerSpec framework to do environment validation of development and test environments. The first version is set up in a very basic way where you pass a single host IP or Name and it connects over WinRM.

This is specifically designed to be an example of how one might test long-lived environments without taking the leap into configuration management tools such as Chef. Although that would be the logical and ideal situation, there are times where it's not yet possible to take that step.

The other area I wanted to demonstrate was the use of these tools to test in a Windows environment rather than the more commonly demonstrated Linux-based environments.

I would like to enhance this to be more role based in the future so that rather than specifying a number of hosts and specs, you can define roles and specs and then assign roles to a list of hosts.

Ideally these roles would match Chef or Octopus Deploy roles too. In the future I would like to build some integrations between the various tools.

I've shared the code for this example on GitHub here: https://github.com/ShawInnes/environment-validator

Sample ServerSpec File

The serverspec format is very familiar to anyone who has done BDD before. It uses a format which can be easily read by less technical humans which is a huge selling point for me.

require 'spec_helper'

describe 'SQL Server 2014' do
  describe service('SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)') do
    it { should be_installed }
    it { should be_enabled }
    it { should be_running }
    it { should have_start_mode('Automatic') }
  end

  describe package('Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (64-bit)') do
    it { should be_installed }
  end

  describe port(1433) do
    it { should be_listening.with('tcp') }
  end
end

ServerSpec Command

To execute the test you just run rake from the command line. This is an example of what I would run on my Mac from the terminal, but it could equally be kicked off by running it from a command prompt or PowerShell prompt in Windows.

TARGET_HOST="10.0.1.3" TARGET_USER="packer" TARGET_PASS="topsecret123" rake

Sample Output

DevOps Tools
Package "Chef Development Kit v0.6.2"
should be installed

Developer Tools
Package "Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 2015"
should be installed
Package "JetBrains ReSharper Ultimate in Visual Studio 2015"
should be installed
Package "JetBrains dotCover 3.1.2"
should be installed
Package "JetBrains dotMemory 4.3.2"
should be installed
Package "JetBrains dotPeek 1.4.2"
should be installed
Package "JetBrains dotTrace 6.1.2"
should be installed
Package "LINQPad 4"
should be installed

Internet Information Server (IIS)
IIS Application Pool "api.serenityone.com"
should exist
should have dotnet version "4.0"
IIS Website "api.serenityone.com"
should exist
should be enabled
should be running
should be in app pool "api.serenityone.com"
Port "80"
should be listening
File "c://inetpub//wwwroot"
should be directory

NodeJs
File "c:/program files/nodejs/node.exe"
should be file
should be version "0.12.4"
md5sum
should eq "e05e5562864f2c914259ff562fa51be4"

Developer Tools
Package "Octopus Deploy Server"
should be installed
Package "Octopus Deploy Tentacle"
should be installed

RabbitMQ Server
Service "RabbitMQ"
should be installed
should be enabled
should be running
should have start mode "Automatic"
Package "RabbitMQ"
should be installed
Port "5672"
should be listening
Port "15672"
should be listening

Seq Server
Package "Seq"
should be installed
Service "Seq"
should be installed
should be enabled
should be running
should have start mode "Automatic"
Port "5341"
should be listening

SQL Server 2014
Service "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)"
should be installed
should be enabled
should be running
should have start mode "Automatic"
Package "Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (64-bit)"
should be installed
Port "1433"
should be listening

Local User Configuration
User "shaw.innes"
should exist
should belong to group "Administrators"

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Code and contributions

The source for this ServerSpec sample is available on GitHub here: https://github.com/ShawInnes/environment-validator