Overview -------- Stand-alone Megatest Area ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A single, stand-alone, Megatest based testsuite or "area" is sufficient for most validation, automation and build problems. image::megatest-stand-alone-area.png[Static,300] Megatest is designed as a distributed or decoupled system. This means you can run the areas stand-alone with no additional infrastructure. I.e. there are no databases, web servers or other centralized resources needed. However as your needs grow you can integrate multiple areas into a bigger system. Component Descriptions ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ . Multi-area dashboard and xterm. A gui (the dashboard) is usually the best option for controlling and launching runs but all operations can also be done from the commandline. Note: The not yet released multi-area dashboard replaces the old dashboard for browsing and controlling runs but for managing a single area the old dashboard works very well. . Area/testsuite. This is your testsuite or automation definition and consists of the information in megatest.config, runconfigs.config and your testconfigs along with any custom scripting that can't be done with the native Megatest features. . If your testsuite or build automation is too large to run on a single instance you can distribute your jobs into a compute server pool. The only current requirements are password-less ssh access and a network filesystem. Full System Architecture ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ image::megatest-system-architecture.png[Static,300]