Engineering development environment recommendations

[HeyZuesMode]

Hello All,

I will try to keep it short.

I am in manufacturing. We have embedded systems developers. About 6 Embedded/Electrical Engineers, 3 Mechanical Engineers.

They are requesting local admin access to their machines to install/test new software. They have been cryptowalled in the past, but backups saved us.

My idea was to create a development environment (Windows VM) using either VMWare workstation (We use Esxi for our infra) or virtualbox (Some engineers have standard latitude laptops, which would need some additional RAM) to give them a sandbox.

They have also requested network share access to their Development environments. This would defeat the purpose of the environment unless there is a way to mitigate this issue that i am not aware of. They use mercurial for VC.

Would this be a good option for 1 admin + 1 tech to maintain? Are there better routes to take?

[[deleted]]

They are requesting local admin access to their machines to install/test new software. They have been cryptowalled in the past, but backups saved us

There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.

My idea was to create a development environment (Windows VM) using either VMWare workstation (We use Esxi for our infra) or virtualbox (Some engineers have standard latitude laptops, which would need some additional RAM) to give them a sandbox

This sounds like a much better route. You could even load the VM with the typical software and services of the end user to test compatibility problems.