> Teresa Biehler 
> 
> Do most of you have more extensive test environments?  How do you get
> funding to build them?  What business case do you make?

No. Our test environment is mostly old producton equipment that's been 
replaced. There have been a few pieces of hardware actually purchased 
*for* test, but that's pretty rare. In terms of clients, it's about 1/10 
the size of production. In terms of capacity, it's even smaller. Our test 
server is an old, slow (248 mHz) Sun server with internal disks for a disk 
backup volume. As you know, the difference in scale can make for ... 
interesting ... production upgrades. That probably, at least partially, 
accounts for my general intense dislike of upgrades. :-)

I suspect getting funding for a spiffy test environment might be tough, 
especially these days, but I too would be interested in hearing good 
business case arguments.

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