# Lab Philosophy

> This lab is designed around clarity, longevity, and predictability.

Status: active · Kind: intent · Last verified: 2026-07-20 · Date: 2025-12-01

> Status: active
> Last verified: 2026-07-20 (against the current hardware and architecture records)
> Scope: durable design principles rather than runtime state

This lab is designed around **clarity, longevity, and predictability**.

Systems are built to run continuously for years with minimal intervention,
favoring conservative architecture decisions over maximum density or
short-term performance gains.

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## Guiding Principles

### Single-Socket by Design

All systems use single-socket platforms.

This avoids:

- NUMA complexity
- cross-socket latency
- unnecessary scheduling overhead

Modern single-socket EPYC systems provide more than enough memory bandwidth
and PCIe connectivity for the workloads in this environment.

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### Predictable Over Peak

Peak benchmarks are less interesting than behavior under sustained load.

Hardware is evaluated based on:

- thermal stability
- I/O consistency
- ease of troubleshooting
- long-term supportability

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### Mirrors Over Complexity

ZFS mirrors are preferred over complex parity layouts.

This simplifies:

- resilvering
- expansion planning
- failure isolation

The goal is not maximum usable capacity, but **operational clarity**.

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### Hardware as Infrastructure

Systems are treated as infrastructure, not experiments.

Changes are intentional, documented, and incremental.

If a component cannot justify its complexity over time, it does not belong
in the lab.

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## Closing Notes

The systems documented here are not designed to be impressive on paper.

They are designed to be **boring, reliable, and understandable** — even
years after deployment.