Best Practice: Should ATF Test Generator & Cloud Runner Be Installed in Production?

[HassanAl]

Hello Community,

I’m looking for some guidance on best practices regarding Automated Test Framework (ATF) Test Generator and Cloud Runner across environments.

Our Use Case

• We actively use ATF & Cloud Runner in Dev and Test to automate validation and testing.

• Before each upgrade, we clone Prod to Test/Dev, which removes the plugins if they aren’t installed in Prod.

• This means we have to reinstall ATF & Cloud Runner in Dev/Test after every clone, which is becoming a manual overhead.

Key Question

Would it be beneficial—or even recommended—to install ATF Test Generator & Cloud Runner in Production to avoid reinstalling them post-cloning?

Concerns & Considerations

• Security risks: Would installing testing tools in a live Prod environment pose any risks?

• Performance impact: Could these plugins affect production system performance?

• Governance standards: Are there ServiceNow-recommended practices for keeping ATF tools only in non-prod environments?

Has anyone faced similar challenges? What’s the best approach—install them in Prod or keep them strictly in Test/Dev and reinstall them after cloning?

[Jagadish_KK]

No, the production installation of ServiceNow should not have the Automated Test Framework (ATF) Test Generator and Cloud Runner installed.

Because ATF tests have the ability to mimic workflows, change records, and pose as users.
Unintentional data modification or even outages could result from running tests or using test generators in production.

[Dr Atul G- LNG · Accepted solution]

Hi @HassanAl 

Based on my experience, what we did was move all our test cases from Dev to Test and then to Prod. We also installed the ATF plugin in Prod. Since ATF is not recommended for Prod, we disabled it via properties and also disabled our test cases and suites. This way, when cloning happens, nothing gets impacted in the lower instances.