It is a rare case today where you can find an
enterprise, service provider or network equipment manufacturer that isn’t under
tremendous pressure to increase efficiency and squeeze every last centime of profitability out of the
proverbial rock. In that spirit, a
common initiative is to find ways to reduce power consumption, since this
directly impacts bottom-line operating costs.
It also happens to make environmental sense, which the public relations
and marketing department can use to bolster the social justice score of the
company’s brand.
Test labs are a prime target to “go green”
because they consume massive amounts of electricity for the operation and
cooling of power-hungry equipment including:
- The devices under test (DUTs) such as switches, routers, and computing and storage servers
- Test generation switches; and
- The equipment that provides connectivity between all the actual testing devices
If reducing the amount of time that test lab
equipment spends powered up is the key to reducing power consumption, then it
is essential to understand the aspects of typical test lab operational processes
that cause test devices to be powered up longer than is truly necessary. One look at the typical test lab and one can
see that the lack of information technology-driven automation in the test lab
environment is at the root of many inefficiencies in the lab, including power
consumption.
No one in the front offices of companies that possess
large test labs would consider it efficient to coordinate meetings and resources
without a shared calendaring system like Microsoft Exchange, nor would they
consider post-it notes to be the state of the art form of messaging. It is laughable to restrict communication in
a large office building setting to telephones connected manually by an operator
using cables and a physical switchboard.
Yet that, in a sense, is the state of business process automation in
many test labs. Very costly DUTs and
test generators are often connected together with an unruly mess of cables and
manual patch panels. Testing teams
coordinate their usage of equipment through “hands off” post-it notes placed on
equipment that is in use, and through emails.
Visibility to and calendaring of resources is typically non-existent as
well—it’s all handled in a very manual fashion.
The lack of automation dramatically increases the
amount of time it takes to connect test equipment together and to configure the
test devices so that they’re ready for testing.
Sorting through a spaghetti mess of cables and physically connecting the
various test components into a testing topology can take hours or even
days. A test engineer may take further
hours or days to load the right OS or firmware versions and configure the
devices in a large test bed topology.
Due to the downside risk of making mistakes during setup and
configuration, equipment is often kept locked down and powered up during that entire
period. And it gets even worse.
Delivery of the actual software that must be
tested is often delayed. Since the time
investment just to prepare for the test is so high, engineers often will simply
keep test topologies locked up sto avoid the risk of losing access to a
critical test component or having their configuration changed. As a result, the ratio of time spent in setup
and configuration vs. actual testing can be as lopsided as 80% vs. 20%. From a power consumption and cost containment
point of view, this way of doing business presents a huge opportunity for
improvement. Lab automation software
provides the means to realize that opportunity by changing the way test labs
are operated. Lab automation software
does this by:
Connecting to and controlling all the equipment
in the lab, including all the Power Distribution Units (PDU’s) in the lab, including
how the PDUs are connected to each other.
This capability enables much better control over power consumption
because the lab automation software can easily power on and off required
resources, and even manage power as regularly scheduled provisioning procedures
in the lab.
Enabling testers to build and schedule the
precise resources they need in a test topology, including the design and
activation of their connectivity, provisioning of proper OS and firmware
versions onto devices, and configuration of logical parameters and
features. This advanced scheduling
minimizes setup time and wasted powerTracking scheduling and activation
indicators of device utilization and test completion providing vital business
intelligence reports to help managers and architects continue to refine best
practices and continuously improve efficiency.
Ultimately, lab automation is good for saving
money on power and cooling and leads to dramatic CAPEX savings, since by
increasing device utilization, less costly new equipment needs to be purchased
annually. Lab automation’s efficiency
benefits also extend to the speed and thoroughness with which testers can
complete their test cases, leading to better test coverage, faster time to market
and higher initial quality. So, while
lab automation software can help turn lab hardware greener in terms of power
usage, it can also help deliver more “green” to organizations by delivering
better top and bottom-line business results and profitability.
About the Author
Alex Henthorn-Iwane
joined QualiSystems in 2013 as Vice-President of Marketing, and is responsible
for worldwide marketing and public relations. For more information, please
visit http://www.qualisystems.com.
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