Introduction
What is Rimo3 Enterprise (R3E)?#
At the simplest level, R3E takes the headache out of application lifecycle management which is particularly handy with the new Evergreen approach to Windows 10.
At a slightly more detailed level, we import the packages from your environment, test them against a specified version of Windows, and tell you whether they will run. On top of that, we will also tell you whether they start up more quickly or more slowly than on a previous Windows release, and if they use more or less resource. Since this testing takes place on systems within your network, using your installations, it is representative of what your users will see. And as a cherry on top, we collect video and screenshots to show you how the testing ran, and if it failed, exactly where it failed. All at the click of a button.
How does R3E work?#
At a high level, R3E consists of two parts. Depending on how your environment was setup, this could be configured in several ways but for simplicity we will refer to these as the cloud side and the local side. In the majority of ACTIV installations, the cloud side would sit in the cloud, and the local side would sit inside your network.
A picture speaks a thousand words, so have a look at the diagram below and we will talk about the different parts.
This diagram is busy, but do not worry we will go through each part in turn, starting from the left:
The User -- this of course represents you. By the time you have digested this guide, you will be able to create and run test cases in R3E!
The R3E Web Host -- generally this will sit in the cloud for most of our deployments. This is the only part of R3E that you will see as a user, it is where the interface sits, and acts as a sort of broker for all the action taking place between the scenes. Not shown with it is a database server -- the two of them work together to store and present the information.
Video Streaming Server -- this sits alongside the webhost, usually in the cloud. It keeps all the video from the test runs and makes it available when you are reviewing them. We split it out as video streaming can be resource intensive and it avoids any performance impact on the web host itself.
From here, we generally skip over the internet to your environment. All the traffic backwards and forwards is carried over encrypted HTTPS and protected from end to end. Additionally, the communications will always originate from within your network, never from the internet. This is a choice we made to improve security and avoid having to open holes in your network for us to pass through.
Now we are inside your network on the right-hand side, which is where the real magic happens.
Gateway -- this server functions as the nerve center for R3E. This server is the only device that communicates with everything we have just looked at over the internet. It coordinates the test jobs between all the different Task Runners, handles any authentication that is needed (to make sure passwords do not have to leave your network) and sends the results back to the web host for you to view.
License Server -- this may or may not be present, and if it is, you will usually find it installed on the Gateway. It looks after the license for Ranorex which is used to automate UAT testing for a few customers.
Task Runners -- The Task Runners are the last bits of the puzzle. These are the systems that carry out the test cases and generate the results. These can either be physical or virtual -- in most cases they will be virtual as this reduces the time needed for testing as well as allowing things to be scaled out more quickly if you suddenly need to test against five potential builds instead of one, for example.
The VM Host and SCCM host are parts of your infrastructure and included here only for completeness. Whilst R3E interacts with each of these, they are not part of the product and outside the scope of this guide.