Open Sourcing Automation Tools for Testing Linux Images on Microsoft Azure

Posted by Michael Kelley
Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Open Source Technology Center

Microsoft has participated in the Linux community for several years now, contributing drivers for Hyper-V to the Linux kernel source code base, and then working with Linux distribution partners to incorporate those drivers into their distros. We’ve had great results in running a variety of Linux distros as a guest OS on Hyper-V and as a VM in Microsoft Azure, and our collaboration with SUSE has been a foundation for this work for many years.

Now we’re taking it a step further and open sourcing our test automation tools in a GitHub project, making it easy to validate Linux images for running in Azure. As noted in a recent blog post by SUSE, these test automation tools are Powershell, Python, and BASH scripts that allow Linux images to be tested for compatibility with Azure. 

These are exactly the tools that Microsoft uses in-house to validate Linux images for running in Azure, and we’re super-pleased that SUSE and their ISV eco-system are able to make use of this automation to provide an even broader set of Linux images for Azure. And, of course, we encourage ISVs or anyone else who wants to create a Linux image for Azure to make use of these tools and to contribute to the GitHub project as well.