When writing automated system/integration tests, it's common for the first step to run before all of the tests to be "start the server." Since starting a server can be expensive, it is desirable to do this one time, not before each individual test. JUnit has easy functionality for doing this. Is there an equivalent standard pattern in nodeunit? Or does it require hand rolling something?

I don't think Nodeunit has this built-in, but many folks handle such tasks with Grunt.

http://gruntjs.com/