Microsoft has made available for download a new component of its next generation development platform as an integral part of the Beta 2 wave of releases. In this regard, early adopters can not only grab Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2, but also the second Beta for Visual Studio Team System 2010 Lab Management. Bryon Surace, a senior program manager on the Windows virtualization team at Microsoft, explained that Visual Studio Team System 2010 Lab Management Beta 2 was designed to offer customers an integrated virtualization for application lifecycle management solution.

Surace noted that Microsoft had labored to introduce a range of improvements in the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010. Testers that will download and run the release will be able to take advantage of a “simplified Virtual Environment creation; Lab Environment Viewer with full-screen capability; manual and automated testing in virtual environment; build-deploy-test workflow for virtual environments; enhanced workflow process parameters UI and report; network isolation with support for domain controller VMs; Setup & Config – verification and auto provisioning of accounts; Virtual Machine templates; “In-Use” support for shared environments,” Surace explained.

With Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010, customers can streamline tasks associated with test execution and build automation related to virtual environments. Microsoft noted that the VS2010 solution was set up to speed up such actions as the setup/tear down and restoration of virtual environments. Build automation is kicked up a notch not only by automating virtual machine provisioning, but also by the manner in which Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010 integrates build deployment and verification.

Surace enumerated “the main features of Lab Management:
■Easily manage more complex test configurations ◦Lab environment as a first class entity for managing multi-machine test environments◦Setup multiple configurations for testing quickly ◦Consistent, reliable access to test environments ◦Create multiple copies of test environments for parallel testing
■New “clean” environment in minutes ◦Environment snapshot: lightweight and efficient ◦Facilitates exploratory testing
■Scheduled build/test cycle on steroids ◦Snapshot to clean environment ◦Build triggered app deployment ◦Testing in more realistic environment
■Rich bugs with environment snapshot◦reduce the number of no-repro bugs.”

Visual Studio Team Lab Management 2010 Beta 2 is available for download here.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 are available for download via this link.