XPRESSO

Creating Job Bundles

About Job Bundles

Job Bundles (also truncated to just "Bundle" on the XPRESSO Dashboard) are grouped combinations of "saved" Jobs (multiple jobs can be selected) and Job Profiles so they can be run as a Bundle Job Request at a later date (for example, to perform regression testing with a specific test environment settings).

Once you create a Job Bundle, they are registered in XPRESSO and saved with a unique name and ID number for identification and tracking purposes.

NOTE:
Job Bundles are just a "saved" references to Jobs and Profiles in XPRESSO; they do not affect individual Jobs or Job Profiles in any way. Individual Jobs and Job Profiles within a Job Bundle can be modified as required. Changes made to a Job or Profile contained in a Bundle will apply to the Bundle as well.

Why Job Bundles Matter?

The advantage that Job bundles offer over running individual Jobs is: a single Job only allows one Job Profile to be selected at a time and they must be scheduled to run on a case-by-case basis. Job Bundles lets you group any combination of Jobs together as a "single" entity (along with as many Job Profiles as required) but lets you schedule them as a "discrete or single" object. Job Bundles are in essence, a "batch" processing tool that has the same attributes of a "testing-template".

A practical implementation of how you can exploit Job Bundles would be to develop a series of job bundles to test a specific networking protocol (example: OSPF or ICMP) or another set to test a specific feature set. Each Job bundle then could contains all required scripts to validate your testing requirements for that scenario. The time saving comes from the fact you can re-use them (and tweak if necessary for a specific testing scenario rather than re-creating them) as many times as your future testing requirement dictates.

Job Bundles vs. Job Groups

Job Bundles and Job Groups have similar attributes; both allow multiple Jobs to be selected so they can be run concurrently.

The key difference between them is Job Groups are created on-the-fly and cannot be saved. Job Bundles on the other hand, can be saved for future use.

See "Creating XPRESSO Jobs" for information about how to run a Job Group from XPRESSO.

Creating Job Bundles

Job Bundles are created on the Registered Job page but viewed and managed on the Registered Job Bundles page.

NOTE:
There is no technical limit for the number of Jobs that can be grouped together in a Job Bundle but be aware of the "practical' time period limit associated with running a Job Bundle. When a Job Bundle is queued to execute, the Job Request will not be marked as "Complete" (Passed | Failed | Etc.) until all Jobs contained within the Job Bundle are finished executing. Therefore, it is recommended that you keep your Job Bundles to a reasonable number of Jobs to allow it to execute within a practical time period. Start with a smaller number of Jobs in your Bundle and work up to meet a balance between available resources and time permitted/utilization in your test environment.

To Create a Job Bundle:

  1. From the Main Navigation Bar, choose Main Menu→EXECUTION→Jobs to open the Registered Jobs page.

  2. Select the checkbox adjacent to two or more Jobs to include in the Job Bundle. The Group Action selection bar appears at the top-right side of the Registered Jobs page (also indicates the number of jobs selected).

  3. Click the Save as Bundle icon button. The Create a Bundle window opens.

  4. Enter a unique identifier for the Bundle Name and add a description.

  5. Click the Save Button. Go to the next procedure to perform any Post-registration Job Bundle operations.

Post-registration Job Bundle Operations

Group Admins can perform the following post-registration management operations with Job bundles after they are created:

To Perform Post-registration Operations on a Job Bundle:

  1. From the Main Navigation Bar, choose Main Menu→EXECUTION→Bundles to open the Registered Job Bundles page.

  2. Locate and highlight the Job Bundle that you want to perform the post-registration operation on and click the appropriate following floating action button located to the right of the Job Bundle.

    • Run: Provides the launch point to configure a new job request via the New Job Request wizard for all Jobs within the Job bundle. See "Configuring and Executing Job Requests" for more information.

    • Schedule: Provides a launch point to schedule a Job Bundle via the New Schedule wizard. See "Job and Job Bundle Scheduling" for more information.

    • Edit: Allows you to edit the Description field in the Bundle Details window. To change the Bundle Name parameter, delete the Job Bundle and create a new one.

    • Delete: Allows you to delete a registered Job bundle from the XPRESSO database.

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