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I am trying to automate the testing of an installer on a remote virtual machine running VMWare ESX. I wanted to know what kind of technologies would help me in doing so, as this task requires extensive communication between the host machine(wherein the user will be getting reports of all the tests(whether pass or fail)) and the remote VM wherein the automated testing code will be hosted. Basically any insight into communication between between the host and the remote VM (mainly i want some sort of a UI to display to the user on the host machine from the VM which runs the test code). ANy help would be of great use. Thank you.

srivirus
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    You didn't provide many details in your question (operating systems, testing platforms involved, installer specifics, and so on), so there aren't many specific answers to give you. – Mark Sturgill Feb 20 '14 at 06:02
  • My sincere apologies for the same. well the host machine is running windows 7 and the VM is also running windows 7. With regard to the installer,well..the installer framework will install some software and hence it needs to report back to the host machine whether it installed everything correctly or not(whether the registry entries,files etc were installed on the remote VM correctly or not.) thus i needed to know any feasible technology to communicate back to the host machine from the remote VM(basically some kind of a UI that could be displayed on the host machine). – srivirus Feb 20 '14 at 06:10

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If you are willing to code it yourself, then you could create a wcf service on the host. A client on the host and on the vm. And then feed the client on the VM the data you need. (E.g. Installation started, finished, error,...)

Then with the client on the host you could implement a duplex binding (usually you should avoid this for security reasons, but since you are running in a "sandbox-like" environment it shouldn't really be an issue.) and the service could push any updates from the vm to the host.

That would be one possible way to do it.

woutervs
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  • @woutervs..Thank you for the reply. i am a little confused if you meant i had to create a wcf service on the vm instead of the host when you said 'then you could create a wcf service on the host'. – srivirus Feb 20 '14 at 10:36
  • A client and service on the host (The client on the host is not really necessary if you only want to generate log files somewhere on the host that can be read afterwards. But if you want real-time communication you also need a client on the host with duplex binding so the service on the host can push events to the client), and a client on the vm that can communicate with the host service. (Which is possible if your VM's networks are bridged or if you have an internal network configured (host-client network)) – woutervs Feb 20 '14 at 10:46
  • @woutervs..Thanks a lot for the reply. Really appreciate it. – srivirus Feb 20 '14 at 10:51