Managing Lab Environments and Virtual Machines

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You manage lab environments, physical machines, virtual machines, and templates in Test Manager, in Lab Center, using the Lab and Library tabs.

Note

For an overview of lab environments, see Using a Lab Environment for Your Application Lifecycle. In addition, this topic assumes you understand the concepts in Guidance for Creating and Managing SCVMM Environments.

Requirements

  • Visual Studio Enterprise, Visual Studio Test Professional

Lab Management Lab and Library tabs

The Lab tab lists the lab environments that have been deployed to your team project lab, and lets you perform these tasks on objects in the team project lab:

  1. Connect to lab environments.

  2. Connect to and manage virtual and physical machines using Environment Viewer.

  3. Create, deploy, and manage standard environments and SCVMM environments

  4. Copy a virtual machine and then store the copy in your team project library as a stored virtual machine or template

  5. Copy an SCVMM environment and store the copy in your team project library

  6. Create, restore, and manage snapshots of SCVMM environments

The Library tab lists SCVMM environments, virtual machines, and templates that are stored in your team project library. However, you can’t connect to or run tests on the lab environments and virtual machines in your team project library until you deploy them to your team project lab. Use the Library tab to perform these tasks:

  1. Create a new SCVMM environment from stored virtual machines and templates, and then deploy that environment to your team project lab

  2. Import stored virtual machines and templates from SCVMM to your team project library

  3. Manage stored virtual machines, templates, and stored environments

  4. Deploy a new copy of a stored environment to your team project lab

Before You Start

Before you manage lab environments, machines, and templates, configure your lab management components. See Test on a lab environment.

Tasks

These topics describe how to operate, modify, and manage your lab environments and the machines in those environments:

Task summary More information
Create a guest-based or host-based connection to the environment - How to: Connect to machines in a Lab Environment
Start, pause, shut down, power off, and delete an SCVMM environment - How to: Operate an SCVMM Environment
Change properties of an SCVMM environment - Viewing and Modifying Properties of an SCVMM Environment
Change properties of a virtual machine or template in an SCVMM environment - Viewing and Modifying Properties of a Virtual Machine or Template in an SCVMM Environment
Store a copy of a deployed virtual machine or template for use in another SCVMM environment - How to: Store a Virtual Machine or Template
Add virtual machines and templates from System Center Virtual Machine Manager to your Team Project Library - How to: Import a Virtual Machine or Template from SCVMM
Store a copy of an SCVMM environment in your library so that you can run multiple instances - How to: Store an SCVMM Environment
Save a copy of an SCVMM environment as a restore point that you can share with other users - Using Environment Snapshots with SCVMM Environments

What’s Next

After you learn how to create and manage lab environments and virtual machines, you’re ready to run tests in your lab environments. Use these topics to get started:

Run tests in your lab environment: You can run manual and automated tests in your lab environment, using Microsoft Test Manager, the Tcm.exe command line utility, or a build-deploy-test workflow. See Test on a lab environment.

Configure automated build, deployment, and testing: Create build-deploy-test workflows to automatically create a build of your application, deploy the build to your lab environment, and run tests on the deployed application. See Automated build-deploy-test workflows.

See Also

Using a Lab Environment for Your Application Lifecycle
Guidance for Creating and Managing SCVMM Environments
Creating Lab Environments