Scalable Patterns and Practices for Test Automation & Continuous Integration for Microservices

 Netflix began streaming services with a simple pricing model in the US. As our global reach grew, so did the complexity of testing our internal, partner, and payments ecosystem. We are Sr. Test Engineers from the Revenue & Growth Engineering (RGE) team at Netflix. The RGE ecosystem at Netflix consists of 100+ internal microservices and a similar number of external partners and payment processors. Over the years we steadily moved towards the “Test Pyramid” paradigm to improve the effectiveness of our continuous integration and release cycles. The “Test Pyramid” approach focuses on grouping tests into multiple buckets and defines the number-of-tests ratio between each group. The principle of this pattern is to push tests down to the bottom levels of the pyramid whenever possible. Our talk explores the challenges with our legacy testing patterns and how these experiences helped us rethink our overall testing and continuous integration strategy. We dive into our experience of partitioning our testing patterns across unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. We’ll share our thoughts around the subtle nuances between integration and end-to-end tests that enable us to handle the coverage and quality of our testing with confidence.