A small datacenter build and other projects

Chrono16,

They are a custom 1u with DC powersupplies. I am sure they are just a modded supermicro chassis.
 
Ohh nice, DC PSUs. Running a 48v power setup? I want to eventually switch to that at home. Need good batteries though so they can handle being constantly charged/discharged at same time.
 
I had a small revelation the other day. Despite all the stress, it is nice to have a moment of clarity every once in a while :). Things are, well, always up in the air here- be that projects or location. We have quickly outgrown our main office in the last 6 months and will be moving in the next year or so. At the same time, we are out growing our production/warehouse site too. There has been talk of moving the main office to a location with a small warehouse attached and moving our production staff to there- leaving me the current warehouse to build out as a data center. It has been left to me if I want to keep this space to build out a small data center.

There are ups and downs to this location, but for the next several years it would more then suit our needs. My biggest complaint is that the building backs a neighborhood and large ac/generators = noisy. It does have 800 amps of 480v 3ph available and a great attached office space.

Anyways, the entire point of this is as follows. We are for sure moving out of our main office and pending my decision, keeping the existing warehouse space for a small data center. Since we are currently rebuilding the network at the main office, it hit me today: Why not move my production servers to the ware house and turn that in to the main server hub? This way when time comes to move the main office, it would have no impact on my web servers or application servers. It seems like the best idea for now. Oh well, plenty to think about.
 
And I have Fiber!

But first- Monitor Man! I needed a portable station for moving around to different racks and this was the easiest solution for now. It ran just over $300.
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On to the fiber! 100mb site to site with 100mb EDI next!
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Got one of the small test clusters back online and imaged. Having a 36 port switch seems like such a waste...
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One of the oldest servers we have...
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Built a cad station the other day. 6 core, 24gb ram, 480gb SDD, 2gb Quadro 4000 should be ok for now.
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How to you assemble a wire rack by yourself? Easy! Use a spare USB cable to support each shelf as you insert the stops, then lower.
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Upgraded my machine, the 250gb spindle was struggling.
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The next few weeks are going to be interesting. I am moving the main cluster to our second site. To do this, the ASA's have to be up and going. The netgear switches have to be changed out when that happens, and our new IP schema goes in to effect. Which means I get to rebuild our terrible DHCP/DNS server! Yay....Did I mention I have 2 weeks to do all of this?
 
Found these on my personal phone.

The rack is getting pretty full.
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The new network gear laid out, waiting for time/testing.
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Filled the new shelf up rather quickly...
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Jr. Admin's desk. PS- I'm hiring!
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More cluster nodes and infiniband gear.
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I want this car.
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prepare for 20 "applications" in 3...2...1...

also that car looks nice, but have you seen the new subaru/scion? they look just the same but man what a great shape. havent read anything about them, not kept up on new cars in about 6 years, but i think they are dead sexy looking.
 
I may be a bit of a power glutton. Something about 400whp, AWD, 6spd = win. I looked at the BRZ, but my 135i has more power/cost me less. Plus I could actually put stuff in a wagon. :D
 
heh ok i never looked into speed/power specs of it. and the 135i is a great car. i basically have no reason to get a fast car since im stuck on oahu and have nowhere to make use of a car like that. if things go my way i will hopefully move to europe in a few years and then you can bet your ass i'll get something that scoots. :D
 
I have never seen Ciena gear before, our dual 100 fiber circuits both terminate into Cisco metro-e switches. I love coming into this thread and seeing that infiniband is still getting some serious love.
 
You think you want that car, then you realize that it takes 91+ octain to run that car :( witch = $$ for nothing..

Which is an extra $5~ per fill up generally at any cost. a.k.a. a month's cable bill over the course of 26~ fill ups in a year. At current fuel prices, I don't understand why people flip the shit over the cost of premium. As a percentage of the whole per gallon price it's nothing compared to when fuel was around a dollar per gallon.
 
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Which is an extra $5~ per fill up generally at any cost. a.k.a. a month's cable bill. At current fuel prices, I don't understand why people flip the shit over the cost of premium. As a percentage of the whole per gallon price it's nothing compared to when fuel was around a dollar per gallon.

+1

I get especially get confused when people do the same over diesel. Yes, diesel can cost an extra 10%, but it's usually worth an additional 25% increase in fuel economy. It's simply sticker shock rather than looking at the numbers.
 
+1

I get especially get confused when people do the same over diesel. Yes, diesel can cost an extra 10%, but it's usually worth an additional 25% increase in fuel economy. It's simply sticker shock rather than looking at the numbers.

Diesel costs 10% more? LOL. I wish. Here it's 10% less. We have some of the largest oil reserves in North America yet our fuel prices are insanely high... (SK, Canada BTW)
 
His 135i is turbo and as already mentioned, requires premium :p I'd be more concerned about the AWD guzzling that gas, but STi's are so much fun to drive that you don't mind that much. Something about winter + empty parking lot + snow + AWD = ftw
 
I've been driving a 2006 Evo IX since I bought it in 2006 and I love it. I'm going to be sad when I eventually get rid of it.


Spyder...we need more pics :D
 
His 135i is turbo and as already mentioned, requires premium :p I'd be more concerned about the AWD guzzling that gas, but STi's are so much fun to drive that you don't mind that much. Something about winter + empty parking lot + snow + AWD = ftw

Let's get over this, we all know that turbo cars cost more to fuel than a normal car, let's also add that awd cars are way more to fuel than a 2wd car, so putting the two together = mo fuel witch in the end costs more so lets drop it..
 
in most of the US it's more expensive. Big oil keeps it that way on purpose.

At least it's been that way for the last 10 years or so. I remember that it used to cost roughly half as much before the oil prices got out of hand.
 
If I really want to waste fuel, I can just hop in this:
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Selling this sadly :( Fun little car. No power though. I guess I could be bias.
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Anyways, enough with that. To the half dozen people who PM'd me- I am not quite ready to hire someone. There will be a job up on the website at some point. This may seem like an awesome job, but please don't forget that there is a TON to do and I need just the right person. (Mainly one that will put up with me, hahaha. j/k)

Recent stuff:

Junk pile for recycling: (Minus the SAN)
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Switches came in for the ASA's, two 2910al-24g.
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Anyone need to repatch something? I personally removed all of these during our color coding swap out.
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Pull out a old toughbook from the junk pile, using it to setup a equality old SAN for some short term data storage. 233/800Mpbs read/write isn't too terrible for spindles/48gb ram.
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Above mentioned SAN.
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All racked up.
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Got a new W530 with 32gb ram in. This thing is incredibly fast.
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Bought some speaker/ear protectors- absolutely a must in our warehouse/server rooms. Plus they were cheap and do a great job.
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Spyder-
How long are the white or black patch cables? I am looking for a handful (12-14) that are somewhere between 1'-3' long
 
Spyder

I have a W520, and I love it to peices, only 16GB ram in mine though, but the Quadro 4000 is kinda nice to have in it as well.

Hope you enjoy your W530.
 
The cables are 1-3ft depending on color.

I like my W520 I have now, but one of my field guys really wants USB3 and ESATA. I only use USB3 and my dock has ESATA, so I offered to switch my W520 for his T520. The T520 will become the new loaner and the W530 will be my new workstation at the production building. I really want a small ultrabook for carrying around, no need for a 5+ pound machine anymore.
 
Ordered a 55" LG Google TV for our small production conference room.

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"Testing" the tv with some Top Gear. Best day ever :D
 
Ordered a 55" LG Google TV for our small production conference room.

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"Testing" the tv with some Top Gear. Best day ever :D

HEY the google tv WICKED doesn't that thing have the new google service built in ? kinda like the netflix ?
 
It is running Android 3.2 and other then the clunky remote, I love it. Very smooth interface, great picture, apps are quick. Testing some Futurama off a thumb drive next, haha.
 
It is running Android 3.2 and other then the clunky remote, I love it. Very smooth interface, great picture, apps are quick. Testing some Futurama off a thumb drive next, haha.

one thing i love about my Samsung, download movie or rip it and then thumb drive it :) id like to later have it connected to the network so i can just download it drop it into a folder and poof watch :)
 
Spyder...I think I can speak for a bunch of people when I say this but we all hate your guts lol. In a not hateful/loving kind of way lol
 
p3n, yes we do and yes- when I started I insisted we license it. I still need to get a few more, plus without Gea working on this, we would not be running ZFS.
 
Today I moved our inhouse processing cluster from the main site to the warehouse datacenter.

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thats quite a few spindles you got going on there. looking good.
 
Nice work as always. In the third pic from the bottom, what kind of switches are in the top of the rack?
 
The irony is I need more spindles! We only have about 200TB of space across the SAN's (5 total) there and I really would like to see closer to ~500TB per project (two active projects right now). I am moving our 140TB SAN over at some point and will be adding a 20TB VM SAN. Gotta love storage....

The switches are HP 2510-48G and a 36 port Mellanox 40Gb Infiniband.
 
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