PowerShell Pester Dashboard Kickstarter

Pester is a Unit Testing framework. While it can be used to test code through mocking, it can also be used to validate anything that can be coded in PowerShell. Here are some of the features

Outputs Pretty + and - to define passes and failures (most common use)
Can be used to output a standard NUnit xml file which can be read by many interpreters
Can send an error code to the console for further automation

Goal

Provide a finished HTML dashboard with no setup other than to download and run the main script. I want you to take this to your boss and show him today that PowerShell can provide immediate buisiness value to your company.

Note

There are lots of passing and also lots of failing tests. That is intentional. Won't your boss be so happy when he clicks a failed test and can tell you exactly what you need to fix? Try it!

Suggested Ways to Start a Release Pipeline

Run the Invoke-InsfrastructureValidation.ps1 as a sceduled task during the the next maintanence window of your servers and re-run every 15 minutes. Direct the output of the reports to an internal webserver for your team or manager to see. Near the end of the maintanence windowcapture the return code from Pester and send an email to all parties that the infrastructure is validated healthy by automated checks.
Replace the Infrastructure unit tests with code unit tests. On every code commit, run the Invoke-InfrastructureValidation.ps1 and direct the web reports to a Web server.
Have a secondary monitor/tv refresh this page automatically to create a live stream effect.

Special Thanks

The following individuals & organizations have inspired me in this small project.

[@migreen] - Michael Greene is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft in the Enterprise Cloud Group division. Co-Author to the ReleasePipeline
[@StevenMurawski] - Devops & Chef enthusiast. Co-Author to the ReleasePipeline
[@ModelAMSummit] - Automation Summit 2016 put on by @ModelTechSol
[@adbertram] - For having a beer with me while we talked working on pipelines. Be on the lookout for some of his upcoming Pester work.
See ReleasePipeline On RunAsRadio For more information

Dependencies

This project makes use of ReportUnit for reading the NUnit Spec XML from Pester & HTML generation. It is included in the bin folder and is called during script execution.

In 5 Second, Get-Results

Option 1: Clone/Download and open OperationalReports\Index.html in your favorite browswer. Profit.

Have More Time?

Option 2: Step through the controller script. Its well commented. You can change the parameters at the top but don't have to.

. Invoke-InfrastructureValidation.ps1

After the script runs, it will dump a suite of reports in the OperationalReports folder. Open Index.html in IE or Edge. I'll add a blog post to explain the organization of this project soon.

How It Works Overview

The idea is to export-clixml on PS commands at a known good configuration and use the same script that made the original baseline and run it at a later time and compare the two xml files using pester.

Get-Started: Use This in your infrastructure

Make a fresh baseline

Invoke-Command -FilePath .\OperationalBaselines\DC.Snapshot.ps1 -Computername $ComputerName |
Export-CliXML .\OperationalBaselines\MockSnapshots\DSDC01.Baseline.xml

In my script, the role of system is 2nd and 3rd letters of my the node name and is used throughout the script. So DC.Snapshot.ps1 corrosponds to DSDC01.Baseline.xml

Make some changes to that system

Use the commands in DC.Snapshot.ps1 to see what you can change on the system that will trigger a failure on the tests. After making some changes rerun the baselining script

Invoke-Command -FilePath .\OperationalBaselines\DC.Snapshot.ps1 -Computername $ComputerName |
Export-CliXML .\OperationalBaselines\MockBaselines\DSDC01.Baseline.xml

Now Create a Pester Tests

This part is where you design your pester tests to read the XML files that were created in the previous two commands. There is no automation out there for this part so its an engineering process just like the previous two steps. Rename the Pester Test to PesterTests\TestTemplates\DC.Operations.Tests.ps1

Turn The Demo Script Into a Production Ready Script

The section of the Invoke-SuiteReport.ps1 that lists the computer names are setup for mocking this for a presentation or demonstration. Replace this with code to ingest computernames from a CSV, database, text file.

Turn on the water to your pipeline and watch it flow

. Invoke-InfrastructureValidation.ps1

Development

Want to contribute? Great! Send me your pull request!

18nvaz/PSPesterDashboardKickstarter