In a development environment where developers are freely given root / admin access to their personal development VM's is there a need to prevent integration testers from having root / admin access in their personal testing VM's?
The environment will use continuous integration and continuous deployment and aims to follow DevOps.
Naturally anyone who has root / admin access shouldn't log in as root / admin all the time. This question is about who is allowed access to both accounts when doing their work.
Developers have root / admin access so they can configure their personal vm's to meet their needs. Should a tester who is creating tests be able to do the same?
This question is not about whether a test should be run with root privileges. It's about whether a person who writes tests has to ask someone else to configure the personal VM they use to create the tests.
By testers personal VM I'm referring to the VM they use to create automated integration tests. The ones a developer should be able to run on their own personal VM before checking in code.
Best Answer
The situation looks pretty simple to me: people need the tools to do their job correctly. If they need root access, they should be given root access and they should be trusted (and trained, if necessary) to use it responsibly.
Similarly, if they don't need root access then there is no reason to give it to them.