Experiences / 03
03 The Living LaboratoryThe living laboratory
Where ideas are proven before they are sold. Walk the bay: the Raspberry Pi cluster, the PowerEdge servers, two hypervisors side by side, the network bench and the devices we are teaching new tricks.
Select any machine.
Click equipment in the bay, or choose a station from the list. The camera travels to it and the panel explains what runs there, what it has proved, and what stage the work is at.
IllustrativeA 3D reconstruction built from code, not a photograph or a live feed. Authentic photography of the lab is pending.
- 01
Raspberry Pi cluster
Seven nodes proving distributed workloads, private AI inference and dashboard monitoring on low-power hardware, including Raspberry Pi 5 NVMe storage experiments. Experimental
Case study - 02
Dell PowerEdge rack servers
Carry production workloads in Orlando and serve as the reference platform for the refurbished hardware offering. Completed
Hardware - 03
Hyper-V host
Evaluated side by side with Proxmox VE, with Windows Server and Debian guests, for hosting and recovery scenarios. Experimental
Hosting - 04
Proxmox VE host
The open-source half of the virtualization comparison, also running Debian and Windows Server guests. Experimental
Hosting - 05
Network isolation research
Segmented networks, UniFi management and SmartThings integration, with sensitive details deliberately kept private. Experimental
Connectivity - 06
Aurora monitoring dashboard
Monitoring source and secrets-free runbooks for the Orlando PowerEdge environment. Completed
Case study - 07
Sony Dash modernization
A legacy bedside internet device relaunched with a modern software stack inside its original firmware limits. Prototype
Case study - 08
Cisco IP phone customization
New provisioning, branding and interfaces for SIP-capable Cisco desk phones. Prototype
Cisco phones - 09
AI experiments station
Local model serving, agent workflows and distributed job execution evaluated on owned hardware. Experimental
AI services
Only machines running the heartbeat agent are counted; a machine that is not reporting is never shown as online. No names, addresses or topology are published.
Proven here before it is sold.
The laboratory is where a change meets real hardware for the first time, so that a customer’s environment is never the first place it runs.
- 01
Requirements are written first
Operational requirements and constraints are written down before anything is built, so there is something concrete to test against.
- 02
Releases are qualified in the lab
Every software release is tested in the laboratory against defined qualification criteria before it is deployed.
- 03
Monitoring and documentation ship with it
Monitoring, documentation and a rollback plan go out with every release, the same discipline used for our own Orlando environment.
- 04
Hardware is checked before it is quoted
Equipment is powered, inspected and checked before it is quoted. Storage is securely erased and network configuration is cleared.
Hardware
What each environment proves.
Every environment exists to answer a question a customer would otherwise pay to find out. Each carries the status label used across this site: completed, experimental, prototype or planned.
| Environment | What it proves | Status | Where customers see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi cluster | Distributed workloads, private AI inference and monitoring on low-power hardware | Experimental | AI and hosting design decisions |
| Proxmox VE and Hyper-V | Hosting and recovery scenarios with Windows Server and Debian guests on both hypervisors | Experimental | Private lab VPS, available on request |
| Dell PowerEdge servers | Continuous production duty, and the platform behind the refurbished catalog | Completed | Catalog and upgrade planner |
| Network isolation | Segmentation and managed networking, studied with sensitive details kept private | Experimental | Connectivity and integration |
| Device modernization | New software, branding and interfaces for appliance-class hardware | Prototype | Software development |
| Release validation | Written qualification criteria met before anything touches production | Completed | Every release we ship |
Failures happen here first.
- 01
Nothing new runs first on your systems
Configurations, recovery procedures and software are exercised on our own equipment before they are proposed for yours.
- 02
Experiments are labelled as experiments
The cluster, the hypervisor comparison and the device work carry their real status. Nothing experimental is sold as finished.
- 03
Recovery is written down
Runbooks and scripts are maintained so an environment can be rebuilt, and no credentials are ever stored with them.
Recovery runbooks - 04
Private by design
The lab is shown, but its addresses, credentials, management interfaces and network layout are not. The same rule applies to customer environments.
Shown, not exposed.
This page never publishes IP addresses, host names, credentials, VLAN identifiers, management URLs, real network topology or production telemetry. Equipment is rendered generically: the 2U server is a reference design rather than a specific Dell model, and dashboard screens use illustrative data.
Authentic photographs of the laboratory will replace the reconstruction once they are taken and approved.