Running an Effective SE Lab

For most of my SE career I have been fortunate to either have enough resources to build out home labs or be close to a local lab facility. With the availability of cheap hardware (craigslist!) and virtual computing there really is no excuse for not being able to have some testing resources available at your disposal. With that in mind I’m going to talk about setting up an effective lab so that you are maximizing the value of time spent using them.

The Shared Office Lab
The shared lab space poses the biggest difficulty for ongoing management. With shared resources comes the need to manage multiple user profiles as most of the time the users do not use the same configuration. To compound the issue shared resources typically lack ownership and are heavily underutilized as the management burden becomes so great people stop finding as much value from them. Here’s a few steps that can keep the environment useful and engaging.

Define the purpose.Like most endeavors, it helps to plan out the desired purpose and capabilities of the lab before getting started. Will customers be present? Will it be used to deliver demos? Is it for staging? Etc…
Assign ownership. Without clear lines of ownership you will usually find that no one steps up to run the lab as it’s difficult to pull yourself away from opportunities for lab work. If it’s an equally shared lab, consider quarterly sentences among the group.
Define process up front. The hardware and image build/teardown process should be clearly defined. Specifically address allowances for the temporary nature of the hardware that can enter and exit the lab.
Automate. Money spent up front on automation of builds and image management presents a huge ROI. Waiting around for manual copy/installation procedures is not a good use of your time.
Document religiously.Anything that goes undocumented or that is not defined will have its process defined ad hoc. Over time these inconsistencies prove frustrating when people enter the lab. I go so far to recommend you treat it like a mini-business.
Enforce policy. Have a published consequence for not following procedure and stick with it. This is an important point for SE managers.
Schedule spot checks.Put a calendar invite in for 30 minutes for the last Friday of each month to go in and do basic housekeeping. Procrastination is a killer.
Invest. Budget quite a bit more money then you think you need. Don’t rely on mismatched equipment unless absolutely necessary. Having non-standard equipment makes it really hard to automate. Spend the money up front to save on huge hassle in the future.
Location is key.If all you get is a closet, are people really going to want to spend any time there? No. Make it as attractive as possible given your resources. Having a good location also makes it possible to work with other SEs on shared tasks.
Virtualize. Leverage virtual machine technology and it can really save you by allowing you to get by with less hardware.

The Home Lab
Having a lab that belongs solely to you has some pros and cons. You usually won’t get the same resources, it costs money (space/utilities/etc), and you have to maintain it yourself which makes it easy to get lazy about its upkeep. On the positive side, you can tailor it to your needs, need less supporting infrastructure, and you can deduct a lot of it on your taxes. Pretty cool stuff. Though you may need to go through most of the above steps (to a lesser degree) to get the most out of the home lab, here are some specific recommendations.

Consider size.That’s what she said! (sorry, Office fan). You’ll usually want to sacrifice computing power and money to save on space. The noise and heat will be a lot lower and you can fit more into a smaller space.
Consolidate.Get a good physical or virtual KVM. It makes the rat nest more manageable too.
Design efficiently.Keep everything in arms length with good KVM design so that you minimize time swicthing between systems.
Organize.Take the time to set up the cables everything else correctly and stay on top of it. It’s easy to let this slide when it’s just you, but eventually your environment gets unwieldy and you stop using it.
Beware of power issues. Your home is a lot less equipped to deal with grid issues than your office (hopefully). Get a good UPS and test it a couple times per year.
Laptops.If you can get away with purchasing a few laptops in place of desktop/server hardware, you may be able to get a small fraction of the footprint without much sacrifice.

Like most things, a lot of these issues can be avoided with simple proactive planning and support from SE management.

There is one other possibility I have not addressed and that is the central lab resource that may be beneficial for larger companies. I’ll address this next.

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