QA/QA Lab Requirements/Minimized
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Contents
Minimalist Plan
Desk 1
- Intel Mac dual booting Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard
- PPC Mac dual booting Tiger and Leopard
- 2 monitors (built in)
- 1 shared keyboard (kvm)
- 1 shared mouse (kvm)
Desk 2
- Win32 PC multibooting XP, Vista (Ultimate & Other), 7
- Win64 PC multibooting XP, Vista (Ultimate & Other), 7
- Linux PC multibooting 32-bit and 64-bit OSs
- 1 shared monitor (kvm)
- 1 shared keyboard (kvm)
- 1 shared mouse (kvm)
Desk 3
- 2 Debug computers for Clint
- 1 shared monitor (kvm)
- 1 shared keyboard (kvm)
- 1 shared mouse (kvm)
Other
- Tablet can roam within the lab
- Printers can run from a single PC (perhaps qamini02 or one of the Windows PCs)
- Devices can roam within the lab and be used with any platform
- One 20+ port switch
Remove
- BC/Tracy computers possibly relocated
- Win98 no longer needed
Maintenance
- All computers should be formatted and reinstalled from scratch
- New images should be made once a clean state is reached
- Images should be stored on network and optical media
- Recommend auto-updates turned on and checked on a weekly or monthly basis
- Once per year, computers should be restored to clean image, fully updated and have new "clean" images created
Summary
Current (assume no KVM) | Minimalistic | |
---|---|---|
Physical Computers | 11 | 7 |
Monitors | 6 | 2 (4 with iMacs) |
Keyboards | 11 | 3 |
Mice | 11 | 3 |
Switch | 1 | 1 |
KVM | 0 | 3 |
Printers | 2 | 2 |
Devices | 0 | Any number of tablets/devices can be accommodated |
Note: The Win32 and Win64 PCs could be combined into one multiboot computer.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Less space
- Less power
- Less cost
- No loss of native platform coverage
- Fault tolerance
- Easy restoration to clean state
- Easy maintenance
Cons:
- Slight downtime for rebooting into desired platform (assuming it is not booted)
Concerns
marcia
- Having to reboot restricts ability for side-by-side comparison
- Experience with KVMs is flaky
- One printer should be connected to a Mac
jmaher
- Consider the current power strip situation and requirements for device dongles
whimboo
- Synergy as an alternative to KVMs (would only share keyboard + mouse, not monitors)
- Each machine would need its own monitor
- For machines with multiple versions of OS X we should create a separate data partition for sharing applications (e.g. debug builds) and data
mikeal
- KVM low use machines
- Synergy high use machines