R&D Facilities in a development team
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Hi there I am looking for insights and experiences about r&d facility arrangements in development teams. I am in a development team that is a part of a larger organization. We develop .net web applications. I have been a part of this team for 3 or 4 years. Initially, we had an R&D lab wherein we had a number of computers and servers that we used for trying things out, and doing impromptu configuration tests. Small *relative* performance comparison tests, etc... The larger organization has demonstrated a desire to eliminate these *rogue* servers from the larger network in favour of controlled VM's accessible via remote desktop that we have to write a business case to acquire, and even then they are only allocated for 3 months unless we write a business case for an extension. blah blah blah.. Needless to say, my initial response to this is resistance. I don't like the idea that we have to add another layer of disconnection and paperwork from the activity of research, experimentation or testing.. I think this will result in a reduction in the effectiveness of testing and add alot of friction to the fostering of innovation amongst our developers. All this being said, its an uphill battle to have anyone recognize these opinions to the degree required to justify and/or protect our lab - I need any real examples that can be provided regarding this issue - or if anyone knows of pertinent articles, that may be helpful as well. I'm going to need to come up with something that speaks to someone *upstairs*.. Any ideas are appreciated.
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Hi there I am looking for insights and experiences about r&d facility arrangements in development teams. I am in a development team that is a part of a larger organization. We develop .net web applications. I have been a part of this team for 3 or 4 years. Initially, we had an R&D lab wherein we had a number of computers and servers that we used for trying things out, and doing impromptu configuration tests. Small *relative* performance comparison tests, etc... The larger organization has demonstrated a desire to eliminate these *rogue* servers from the larger network in favour of controlled VM's accessible via remote desktop that we have to write a business case to acquire, and even then they are only allocated for 3 months unless we write a business case for an extension. blah blah blah.. Needless to say, my initial response to this is resistance. I don't like the idea that we have to add another layer of disconnection and paperwork from the activity of research, experimentation or testing.. I think this will result in a reduction in the effectiveness of testing and add alot of friction to the fostering of innovation amongst our developers. All this being said, its an uphill battle to have anyone recognize these opinions to the degree required to justify and/or protect our lab - I need any real examples that can be provided regarding this issue - or if anyone knows of pertinent articles, that may be helpful as well. I'm going to need to come up with something that speaks to someone *upstairs*.. Any ideas are appreciated.
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I would not complain if the VM had 16GB of RAM, 8 cores, and SAS drives.
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((lambda (x) `((lambda (x) ,x) ',x)) '`((lambda (x) ,x) ',x))lol - the problem is I don't think I need that much ram or that many cores - I think I need a highly available and configurable R&D environment..
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Hi there I am looking for insights and experiences about r&d facility arrangements in development teams. I am in a development team that is a part of a larger organization. We develop .net web applications. I have been a part of this team for 3 or 4 years. Initially, we had an R&D lab wherein we had a number of computers and servers that we used for trying things out, and doing impromptu configuration tests. Small *relative* performance comparison tests, etc... The larger organization has demonstrated a desire to eliminate these *rogue* servers from the larger network in favour of controlled VM's accessible via remote desktop that we have to write a business case to acquire, and even then they are only allocated for 3 months unless we write a business case for an extension. blah blah blah.. Needless to say, my initial response to this is resistance. I don't like the idea that we have to add another layer of disconnection and paperwork from the activity of research, experimentation or testing.. I think this will result in a reduction in the effectiveness of testing and add alot of friction to the fostering of innovation amongst our developers. All this being said, its an uphill battle to have anyone recognize these opinions to the degree required to justify and/or protect our lab - I need any real examples that can be provided regarding this issue - or if anyone knows of pertinent articles, that may be helpful as well. I'm going to need to come up with something that speaks to someone *upstairs*.. Any ideas are appreciated.
To mitigate the "rogue" nature of the servers, they could easily prevent outside-the-LAN access through appropriate firewall filters, and even restrict access to a block of internal IPs (the developer machines). As far as the "lab" machines are concerned, they could upgrade all the dev boxes to quad-core boxes with 8gb RAM and install VirtualBox on it, or even buy 2-3 lab boxes configured as described, and install various OS's on them. This would a) limit the financial outlay in hardware, and b) limit the financial burden of buying all of the applicable versions of Windows for more machines. If you're going to recommend something like that, make sure you do a cost analysis and provide more at least two solutions. If you show that you're willing to help them find an answer, they'll be more likely to help you maintain the existence of the lab.
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Hi there I am looking for insights and experiences about r&d facility arrangements in development teams. I am in a development team that is a part of a larger organization. We develop .net web applications. I have been a part of this team for 3 or 4 years. Initially, we had an R&D lab wherein we had a number of computers and servers that we used for trying things out, and doing impromptu configuration tests. Small *relative* performance comparison tests, etc... The larger organization has demonstrated a desire to eliminate these *rogue* servers from the larger network in favour of controlled VM's accessible via remote desktop that we have to write a business case to acquire, and even then they are only allocated for 3 months unless we write a business case for an extension. blah blah blah.. Needless to say, my initial response to this is resistance. I don't like the idea that we have to add another layer of disconnection and paperwork from the activity of research, experimentation or testing.. I think this will result in a reduction in the effectiveness of testing and add alot of friction to the fostering of innovation amongst our developers. All this being said, its an uphill battle to have anyone recognize these opinions to the degree required to justify and/or protect our lab - I need any real examples that can be provided regarding this issue - or if anyone knows of pertinent articles, that may be helpful as well. I'm going to need to come up with something that speaks to someone *upstairs*.. Any ideas are appreciated.
Point out the cpst of 'optimising' the service is greater than the cost of your lab. Also, the delays in re-authorising the VMs means that engineers will be idle at times.
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Hi there I am looking for insights and experiences about r&d facility arrangements in development teams. I am in a development team that is a part of a larger organization. We develop .net web applications. I have been a part of this team for 3 or 4 years. Initially, we had an R&D lab wherein we had a number of computers and servers that we used for trying things out, and doing impromptu configuration tests. Small *relative* performance comparison tests, etc... The larger organization has demonstrated a desire to eliminate these *rogue* servers from the larger network in favour of controlled VM's accessible via remote desktop that we have to write a business case to acquire, and even then they are only allocated for 3 months unless we write a business case for an extension. blah blah blah.. Needless to say, my initial response to this is resistance. I don't like the idea that we have to add another layer of disconnection and paperwork from the activity of research, experimentation or testing.. I think this will result in a reduction in the effectiveness of testing and add alot of friction to the fostering of innovation amongst our developers. All this being said, its an uphill battle to have anyone recognize these opinions to the degree required to justify and/or protect our lab - I need any real examples that can be provided regarding this issue - or if anyone knows of pertinent articles, that may be helpful as well. I'm going to need to come up with something that speaks to someone *upstairs*.. Any ideas are appreciated.
Do you need physical access to the servers? We've recently moved half of our servers to a virtual environment (8 core processor, 48gb ram, 2TB SAN - x2) and it works out great. I can RDP into our dev, QA and staging environments with ease. If I need a new server setup it can be done within a few minutes by taking a saved image and giving it a new name and ip. BAM done! I even run my own VM's locally if I want to test out beta products (hello asp.net mvc!).
Todd Smith
