Drawbacks are that it's nontrivial to set up and requires some rigid formalism in developer output that sometimes demands training and/or cultural change. But it's definitely something everyone should consider.
In my (currently internal, heavily LXC-utilizing but) infrastructure and OS neutral project, I am looking at specifically this sort of automation but for complex topologies of interdependent services, HA clustering layers, complex emulated network topologies (bonded links, multiple VLANs), etc. Plans are to include failure testing at the communications level (slow links, lossy links, cable snaps, switch failures, etc.) in addition to resource levels (disk, memory, etc.).
Outputs of a successful automated testing environment can include amazingly detailed information for capacity planning, automatically generated security policies (both for container-side, host-side and infrastructure-side deployment).
It's a fascinating area and one that is ripe for great change. Many people have needs here, the question is how to meet them at the intersection of current infrastructure and codebases, existing teams, business level concerns, varying hardware availability, etc. Both pre-commit and post-commit hooks are useful for different types of automation. IMHO LXC's blazing speed broadens significantly what can be tested with pre-commit.
Drawbacks are that it's nontrivial to set up and requires some rigid formalism in developer output that sometimes demands training and/or cultural change. But it's definitely something everyone should consider.
In my (currently internal, heavily LXC-utilizing but) infrastructure and OS neutral project, I am looking at specifically this sort of automation but for complex topologies of interdependent services, HA clustering layers, complex emulated network topologies (bonded links, multiple VLANs), etc. Plans are to include failure testing at the communications level (slow links, lossy links, cable snaps, switch failures, etc.) in addition to resource levels (disk, memory, etc.).
Outputs of a successful automated testing environment can include amazingly detailed information for capacity planning, automatically generated security policies (both for container-side, host-side and infrastructure-side deployment).
It's a fascinating area and one that is ripe for great change. Many people have needs here, the question is how to meet them at the intersection of current infrastructure and codebases, existing teams, business level concerns, varying hardware availability, etc. Both pre-commit and post-commit hooks are useful for different types of automation. IMHO LXC's blazing speed broadens significantly what can be tested with pre-commit.