Last month I wrote about Microsoft’s Virtual Lab Express which is a great tool for previewing and testing software.
As I have investigated further, I think I prefer the Microsoft Virtual Hard Disks (VHD), which are very similar, however the advantage is that you can download the VHD’s to your environment, share them with your end users and then test the functionality in a very secure environment.
I feel that this is the new paradigm for software testing. You can create and entire virtual network within a VHD, along with the Active Directory, DNS, Front-End Application environment and Back End database server environment. You can use this environment for development, user acceptance testing or even offer this environment as a demo or testing environment to your customers.
If you are an IT professional with Microsoft based responsibilities, you should check out both the Microsoft’s Virtual Lab Express and Microsoft Virtual Hard Disks.
