Selecting a Lab Location

Your decisions about the lab model and the lab location are likely to be interrelated. The location for a permanent lab to be used by a wide variety of groups requires more consideration than a short-term lab to be used by a few groups. Room for future growth, for example, is an important issue if you plan to use the lab long-term. To help you make these decisions, consider the following questions:

• What lab facilities already exist? How adequate are they? How easily can you modify them to fit test requirements?
• Can you consolidate existing labs?
• What is the scale and complexity of the implementation?
• How do you want to allocate your lab budget? Consider the following:
  • Facility and workspace expenses (space, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, power, cabling, patch panels, server racks, and workbenches).
  • Hardware and software.
  • Support and other lab personnel.
• Does the lab need to connect to the production network or to other labs? If it needs to connect to the production network, how will you regulate the connection and configure routers to protect the production network?

For more information about connecting the lab to the production network, see "Simulating the Proposed Server Environment" later in this chapter.

Additional issues to consider when selecting lab locations are:

Upgrading or Building New

If you decide to use an existing lab, you might be able to do minor upgrades to accommodate Windows 2000 testing. For example, you might want to upgrade the servers to the same amount of memory and hard disk capacity, and to the same processor type and speed as the servers you plan to deploy.

Accessibility

The lab should be accessible to all of the groups using it. If you implement a program in which people from outside the project team come to test their own applications, the lab should have facilities, such as parking, to accommodate visitors.

Security

Ensure that you can physically secure the lab to protect your equipment from unauthorized use.

Space

Whether you build a new lab or upgrade an existing one, space is a major consideration. Windows 2000 in itself does not require sophisticated, expensive equipment to get up and running. Because it is important to simulate the production environment as closely as possible, the complexity of that environment influences the complexity of the lab.

Factors in your current and proposed production environment that can determine the complexity, and therefore the space requirements, of your lab include the following:

• Number and combination of functions and features you plan to implement.

  Do you plan to implement a domain that spans multiple sites? Do you plan to implement a virtual private network (VPN)?

• Amount of variability in your production environment.

  Do you have — and plan to deploy — standard equipment, applications, and configurations in your production environment? Or will you use many vendors, models, versions, and configurations?

• Level of complexity in your network configuration.

  Do you have more than one type of topology in your production network? Do you plan to have interfaces between Windows 2000 Server and mainframe, Macintosh, or UNIX systems?

In addition to factors in your production environment, some test situations can also affect the complexity of your lab. For example, you might want additional servers so that you can isolate certain types of testing, as described later in this chapter.

Space requirements are also influenced by the number of people you think will participate in testing. Consider how many users you need to accommodate at one time.

Environmental Conditions

The lab location should support suitable environmental conditions, such as temperature, humidity, and cleanliness. These requirements are similar to those of your data center. The lab location should also support your power, cabling, and network connectivity requirements.

Number of Locations

In certain cases, you might want your lab to have multiple interconnected locations so that you can test the effect of geographically separated network segments. For example, if you plan to implement Microsoft® Active Directory™ directory service with multiple Active Directory sites, you might want to test replication over a similar WAN or Internet connection. For more information about Active Directory sites and replication, see "Designing the Active Directory Structure" in this book.

In other cases, you might want to have multiple independent labs for different uses. You might want a separate lab for application testing or perhaps separate labs for Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional testing.

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