Prerequisites

testgrinder service will be discontinued on January 31, 2025

testgrinder SMPC was discontinued as of February 1, 2024

This page provides a list of the necessary prerequisites that will be required during the deployment of testgrinder.

AWS Account

REQUIRED

testgrinder is designed to run on Amazon Web Services platform. You will need to have an account with AWS to deploy testgrinder.

SMTP Server

REQUIRED

testgrinder requires a way to send emails to its users. You can use your own SMTP server or the AWS Simple Email Service (SES) for this purpose. In either case, testgrinder will need the following configuration items:

SMTP_HOST:      SMTP server host, e.g. email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
SMTP_PORT:      SMTP server port, e.g. 587
SMTP_USERNAME:  SMTP username, e.g. my-username
SMTP_PASSWORD:  SMTP password, e.g. my-password

testgrinder Domain Name and Elastic IP Address

REQUIRED

To use testgrinder, you'll need to select and register a domain name with your DNS server, such as Route53 provided by AWS. You'll also need to allocate an Elastic IP (EIP) address and assign it to the domain name. If you're using an Auto Scaling group to manage tg-app instances, you may want to consider assigning a dedicated EIP to each availability zone for improved fault tolerance. Once you've completed these steps, testgrinder will be able to respond to requests made to the specific domain name you've chosen.

DOMAIN_WEB:  domain name for testgrinder to respond to, e.g. tg.my-company.com
EIP:         Elastic IP that will be assigned to testgrinder   

Key Pair

REQUIRED

To set up and monitor testgrinder servers, you will need to specify the Key Pair that you will use when launching the servers.

KEY_NAME:    name of the Key Pair in AWS EC2 to which testgrinder servers will allow access

External Database

RECOMMENDED

To use testgrinder, a MongoDB database is required. If you're just evaluating testgrinder, a preinstalled database is provided for you. However, this preinstalled database is not intended for production use. The deployment instructions will guide you on how to subscribe to a MongoDB database hosted by mongodb.com or provide your own database.

MONGODB_URL:    the URI to the external database

Papertrail Integration

OPTIONAL

To use this feature, you will need to sign up for a Papertrail account and obtain the necessary log destination information. Once you have this information, you can configure testgrinder servers to send their logs to Papertrail by including the log destination information in the testgrinder configuration files. This will allow you to easily collect, search, and monitor all testgrinder logs in one place.

PAPERTRAIL:    the endpoint supplied to you by Papertrail

Bugsnag Integration

OPTIONAL

testgrinder can send issue reports to Bugsnag, allowing you to instantly receive notification of any problems that occur during operation and receive detailed information to help resolve them.

BUGSNAG_API_KEY:    Bugsnag API Key provided to you by Bugsnag