Setting Up a Test Instance of Cascade Server

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Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 3:00pm -- Tim ReillyBookmark and Share

Did you know that your organization is entitled to a Cascade Server testing license free of charge as part of your standard license agreement?  There are numerous benefits to setting up a test instance of Cascade.  First and foremost, a test environment allows your organization to test all Cascade Server upgrades against a copy of your production content.  This process can help eliminate any surprises and can lead to the discovery of potential issues before they affect a production site.  End users can see how the new release will affect their content and can verify that the site is behaving as expected.  They can also experiment with new features and functionality in the confines of a safe environment which is separate from production.  In addition to this, organizations are able to get a feel for how to perform the software upgrades and an idea as to how long a particular upgrade may take to complete.

While it is possible to install a test instance on the production server, we recommend that a separate physical machine be allocated for the test instance. If both the test and production instances are installed on the production server, they could compete for resources and hinder performance.

Setting up a test instance on a separate machine:

• Install the latest Cascade Server version.
• Create a backup of the production database and import it as a new database.
• Point the test Cascade Server instance to the database created in the previous step.
• Disable publishing to destinations by issuing the following query to the database. This will prevent test assets from being published to the live site.

UPDATE cxml_destination SET isEnabled=0;

• Disable email notifications by issuing the following query to the database. This will prevent emails from being sent regarding workflows, etc.

DELETE FROM cxml_preferences WHERE fieldName LIKE '%smtp%';

• Start Cascade Server

Items to test:

Once the test instance is up and running, we recommend:

• Navigating to several pages throughout the system and verifying that they render correctly
• Editing/Submitting several assets within the system
• Publishing assets to a staging server
• Sending assets into workflow and verifying that the worfklow completes
• Testing any custom publish triggers
• Creating new assets using existing Asset Factories
• Experimenting with new features/functionality in the product

For more information regarding setting up a test instance, please visit this area on our knowledge base, or if you are interested in obtaining a test license, contact info@hannonhill.com.

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