QA/QA Lab Requirements/Minimized

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