According to the inventive method, a network, including its software environment, is suspended in a manner that completely preserves the previous running environment and frees the network to perform other tasks for a period of time, and then to resume the original test as if it had never been interrupted. The method suspends a computer network that is running a test of a first software environment. It suspends the first software environment by a software suspension and then runs a second software environment on the computer network. At the completion of the run of the second software environment, the first software environment can be resumed, as if it had not been interrupted. A sequence of steps allows for the orderly shutdown and persists the entire network's operating state at the time of suspension.