Simulation Testing

The simulation framework validates the full Ranger render pipeline without any live cluster or Azure connections.

It is the primary regression gate for output generation, report rendering, and diagram logic.

This is the core workflow of MAPROOM, the offline synthetic and post-discovery testing solution under tests/maproom/.

Philosophy

Rather than mocking individual collector functions, the simulation framework builds a complete, semantically valid manifest from a pool of known fictional data and then runs the full Export-AzureLocalRangerReport pipeline against it.

This catches rendering bugs, schema mismatches, and findings logic that unit mocks cannot.

IIC Canonical Data Standard

All synthetic test data follows the mandatory IIC (Infinite Improbability Corp) canonical standard. The IIC standard is the defined fictional company for all AzureLocal project test data.

Attribute	Value
Company name	Infinite Improbability Corp
Abbreviation	IIC
Internal domain	iic.local
NetBIOS name	IMPROBABLE
Public domain	improbability.cloud
Entra tenant	improbability.onmicrosoft.com
Cluster name	azlocal-iic-01
Nodes	azl-iic-n01, azl-iic-n02, azl-iic-n03
Node IPs	10.0.0.11–10.0.0.13
iDRAC IPs	10.245.64.11–10.245.64.13
Hardware	Dell PowerEdge R760
Tenant ID	00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Subscription ID	33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333
Resource group (compute)	rg-iic-compute-01

Do not use tplabs, Contoso, or any other fictional company name in test data. All test data must use IIC values.

Synthetic Manifest

tests/maproom/Fixtures/synthetic-manifest.json is the pre-generated IIC manifest the simulation tests load. It represents a healthy 3-node as-built deployment with:

• 3 nodes all in Up state
• 5 VMs (3 AVD pool members + 2 Arc VMs)
• 24 NVMe disks across 3 nodes
• Azure Monitor Agent on all 3 nodes
• DCR, DCE, and Log Analytics Workspace configured
• 1 certificate expiring within 60 days (triggers a Warning finding)
• 2 warning findings and 2 informational findings
• mode set to as-built

The fixture is committed to the repository so simulation tests run without executing the generator.

Running Simulation Tests

# Run simulation tests only
Invoke-Pester -Path .\tests\maproom\unit\Simulation.Tests.ps1 -Output Detailed

# Run all unit tests
Invoke-Pester -Path .\tests\maproom\unit -Output Detailed

# Run the full test suite
Invoke-Pester -Path .\tests -Output Detailed

Manual Visual Runner

tests/maproom/scripts/Test-RangerFromSyntheticManifest.ps1 runs the full pipeline and optionally opens the output folder for manual inspection.

# Run and print artifact summary
.\tests\maproom\scripts\Test-RangerFromSyntheticManifest.ps1

# Run and open output folder in Explorer
.\tests\maproom\scripts\Test-RangerFromSyntheticManifest.ps1 -Open

Use this when you want to visually review a rendered report or diagram before committing changes to the render engine.

Regenerating the Fixture

If the manifest schema changes (new domain keys, new required fields, schema version bump), regenerate the fixture:

.\tests\maproom\scripts\New-RangerSyntheticManifest.ps1

Then commit tests/maproom/Fixtures/synthetic-manifest.json. The generator script documents its own data pools at the top of the file.

Regenerate the fixture when:

• you add new keys to Get-RangerReservedDomainPayloads in 01-Definitions.ps1
• you bump the schema version in Get-RangerManifestSchemaVersion
• simulation tests fail with schema validation errors after a manifest model change
• you add a new collector domain that the existing fixture does not cover

What Gets Tested

tests/maproom/unit/Simulation.Tests.ps1 contains tests that validate the full pipeline:

Test	What It Validates
Renders all 3 report tiers	Executive, Management, and Technical markdown files are produced
IIC cluster name in reports	azlocal-iic-01 appears in the rendered output
Warning findings surfaced	Warning-level findings appear in executive and management reports
At least 5 diagrams in as-built mode	As-built renders a meaningful diagram set
monitoring-telemetry-flow diagram generated	Monitoring diagram artifact is present
workload-family-placement diagram generated	Workload placement diagram artifact is present
No error-state artifacts	No artifact in the result set carries status = error
As-built report includes document control block	Document control header is present in as-built markdown output
As-built report includes sign-off section	Sign-off block is present in as-built technical report

Writing New Simulation Tests

When adding a new render feature, add at least one simulation test that:

1. calls Export-AzureLocalRangerReport against $manifestPath (the IIC synthetic manifest)
2. asserts the specific artifact or content change your feature introduced
3. uses $TestDrive as the output root so it is cleaned up automatically by Pester

Example structure:

It 'generates the new-feature artifact' {
    $outputRoot = Join-Path $TestDrive 'sim-new-feature'
    $result = Export-AzureLocalRangerReport -ManifestPath $manifestPath -OutputPath $outputRoot -Formats @('markdown')

    $generated = @($result.Artifacts | Where-Object { $_.relativePath -match 'new-feature' })
    $generated.Count | Should -BeGreaterThan 0
}

Fixture Data Schema

The synthetic manifest must pass Test-RangerManifestSchema without errors. If you add new required fields, update both:

1. Get-RangerReservedDomainPayloads in Modules/Internal/01-Definitions.ps1
2. The corresponding data section in tests/maproom/scripts/New-RangerSyntheticManifest.ps1

Then regenerate and commit the fixture.