Workstations and other infrastructure

The fact that people in DevOps together are responsible for all tasks and activities requires each of them to have access to a workstation with all the needed capabilities to enable them to perform the tasks. This creates specific demands for the performance and capacity of the computer hardware, especially when the test environment is on their own workstation using containerization. When cloud technology is used, this may have totally different demands for hardware.  

Below we will provide a number of common examples of considerations relevant when determining the requirements people in DevOps have for their workstation.  

• Different user accounts for testing the various roles that users can have
• Administrator rights – the team members must be able to install and uninstall software on the environment
• Processor-power – the workstation must have enough power to run the relevant software, tools etc.
• Memory – the workstation must have enough memory to run all systems
• Management and maintenance of the workstation and licenses

A team may decide to request one or more extra workstations for dedicated tasks such as long-running performance tests or regression tests.  

Other computer infrastructure needed by the team may vary very much. For example, think of the huge number of different mobile devices today, but also new developments like connected devices on the Internet of Things.  

With regards to network infrastructure, the team has to consider if the standard company network should be used or if the team needs a separate network to prevent interference between the activities of the team and of other systems.