A large part of my job involves addressing technical debt with remediation scripts deployed through Intune. Leadership wants stronger assurance that these scripts behave as intended and that we can demonstrate meaningful testing before they reach production. Testing only on our own computers isn't considered sufficient. We've discussed using Hyper-V virtual machines and Windows Sandbox, but I'd like to hear what environments and processes others use for testing remediation scripts and similar deployments.
3 Answers
A layered process is usually best. Keep several representative test devices or VMs covering the main types of users and configurations, then smoke-test larger changes there before releasing them to a small pilot group. The pilot can include IT staff or dependable power users who will report problems, followed by a broader rollout if the results look good. No test environment will perfectly predict production, so document the test cases and keep the rollout gradual.
Windows Sandbox works well for quick, disposable checks: start clean, copy in the script, run it, validate the results, and discard the environment. For more involved testing, I use Hyper-V with snapshots so I can restore a known-good state. Physical hardware is useful when drivers, device management, or hardware-specific behavior could affect the result.
The specific tool matters less than how closely the environment matches production. Try to reproduce the relevant Windows versions, policies, software, permissions, and device configurations, and make sure you can automate both deployment and cleanup.
Related Questions
Can't Load PhpMyadmin On After Server Update
Redirect www to non-www in Apache Conf
How To Check If Your SSL Cert Is SHA 1
Windows TrackPad Gestures