A small datacenter build and other projects

How are you going to remove the hot air from the rear?

Looking good by the way!

Also how do you get this done so fast? Any changes in my place involve a change management process and than a number of change arbitration board meeting where you are grilled about the plan and the roll back then another set of meetings involving all the people involved in each step. I needed a 4 week lead time to up a set of VMs in a cluster to 32GB of ram.

The job should take 10 minutes including shutdown and start up. Mind you will have about 2000 blades with god knows how many live VMs running.
 
Last edited:
I like the 'WTF were you thinking electrical nightmares' picture. We had to do some of that stuff for stage lighting/power distribution at school. I still cringe at times.
 
Jay,
The hot air is extracted via two roof exhaust fans. They are currently off due to the ~40-50f winter weather. The warehouse stays nice and toasty when we are processing. (80-90f). Hopefully I will have AC here soon.

This took several months, the actual construction took just a few days. Since I am starting with no processes or oversight until anything above a set spending amount, I can get many of these projects done with little interference. Sadly this will all be changing Jan 1st. I have a budget, paperwork, and a lot of planning to do... Oh well :).
 
Jay,
The hot air is extracted via two roof exhaust fans. They are currently off due to the ~40-50f winter weather. The warehouse stays nice and toasty when we are processing. (80-90f). Hopefully I will have AC here soon.

This took several months, the actual construction took just a few days. Since I am starting with no processes or oversight until anything above a set spending amount, I can get many of these projects done with little interference. Sadly this will all be changing Jan 1st. I have a budget, paperwork, and a lot of planning to do... Oh well :).

The fun had to end sometime didnt it? Let the bureaucracy begin!
 
Yes, but with any growing company it had to happen. At least I get a hand in building the processes/ect to my liking.


So two months of planning/cleaning/prep for a 20 minute walk through and 2 hour meeting... Gotta love it! Sounds like everything went great though. :)
 
Yes, but with any growing company it had to happen. At least I get a hand in building the processes/ect to my liking.


So two months of planning/cleaning/prep for a 20 minute walk through and 2 hour meeting... Gotta love it! Sounds like everything went great though. :)

Welcome ot the big time! That sounds exactly like corporate work.
 
So is there an end to all this gear? Lol. It seems more and more is moved and put in and then moved somewhere else and then new stuff put in lol. None of it seems too permanent. Do you have a final goal in mind?
 
Nothing has moved in the racks, once installed it is permanent to the life of the project. The three doored racks are IT owned, and will hold my VM environment, storage, backups, phone system, routers, switchgear, ect. They will change every ~3 years. I need to order another rack I found out today to host another 336TB of storage for a different project (each customer project gets their own rack), pushing us over 1.5 TB. The SKB's full of gear area always moving/.changing as they are shipped over seas.


Next project is to look at Aruba Networks mobility controllers and remote AP's for linking some of our "mobile" out of country workers/sites.
 
Next project is to look at Aruba Networks mobility controllers and remote AP's for linking some of our "mobile" out of country workers/sites.

Honestly don't think you'll be disappointed going down this street.
 
Sorry if I missed it, but where did you purchase the plastic sheeting and the hangers to build the air wall? I need to do this is my server room sometime.

Aruba gear is nice. I would check out Meraki too, there cloud manged AP's look neat.
 
Any chance you could release your images as a gallery/slideshow? I think you have some very neat stuff in there, and I wanted to thank you for taking your time to post it.
 
Nothing has moved in the racks, once installed it is permanent to the life of the project. The three doored racks are IT owned, and will hold my VM environment, storage, backups, phone system, routers, switchgear, ect. They will change every ~3 years. I need to order another rack I found out today to host another 336TB of storage for a different project (each customer project gets their own rack), pushing us over 1.5 TB. The SKB's full of gear area always moving/.changing as they are shipped over seas.


Next project is to look at Aruba Networks mobility controllers and remote AP's for linking some of our "mobile" out of country workers/sites.

Been playing with some demo aruba gear in house for the past few weeks. I personally love it, way better than the cisco 5508 + 1130/1142aps I've got right now
 
Sorry if I missed it, but where did you purchase the plastic sheeting and the hangers to build the air wall? I need to do this is my server room sometime.

Aruba gear is nice. I would check out Meraki too, there cloud manged AP's look neat.

Start with Simplex or Polargy.
 
If I have time I will put everything in to a gallery.

The strip came from Motion Industries, but you can order it through pvcstrip.com.
I got so much crap from the purchasing manager when I referenced PVCstrip.com though, lol. Silly "demo" girl.
 
I just put in $200k in spending for next year. Cross your fingers for me. :)

Thats all? I put in for more than double that.

Thanks for the link to the site that looks strangely NWSF. I cant wait for the questions from accounting when they see that charge :D Did you go with the normal or anti-static?
 
LOL @ PVCstrip.com. That's awesome. I bet that kind of marketing works too.

Marketing dept: "Just stick a chick next to it, it will sell"
1st quarter meeting: "We have seen a 40% increase in sales..."

Come to think of it I'll have to keep it in mind when I start on my home server room. I have a second rack going in, so I want to do a hot/cold isle setup with force air through the rack.
 
wow impressive stuff going on there.

couple of questions/comments that may have been answered but that's a lot of pages to completely read.

1. what are those white circles with the blue ring in them?
2. if your going to do stuff with planes how are you going to power that stuff, you cant just add a better alternator to a plane if it is commercially rated with out getting a STC for it, and those can be a PAIN and $$$ to get.

anyways again most impressive build up here!

Bob
 
wow impressive stuff going on there.

couple of questions/comments that may have been answered but that's a lot of pages to completely read.

1. what are those white circles with the blue ring in them?
Wireless Access Points of some sort, I believe
2. if your going to do stuff with planes how are you going to power that stuff, you cant just add a better alternator to a plane if it is commercially rated with out getting a STC for it, and those can be a PAIN and $$$ to get.
Not sure myself, kinda wondering now that you've brought it up. I imagine that there's enough power available for it to not be an issue, but who knows.
 
More cluster nodes and infiniband gear.
P3YHIl.jpg


infiniband really??? WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
 
wow impressive stuff going on there.

couple of questions/comments that may have been answered but that's a lot of pages to completely read.

1. what are those white circles with the blue ring in them?
2. if your going to do stuff with planes how are you going to power that stuff, you cant just add a better alternator to a plane if it is commercially rated with out getting a STC for it, and those can be a PAIN and $$$ to get.

anyways again most impressive build up here!

Bob

Those are Unifi Pro APs.
 
thanks user/home and welsper,

welsper Really depends on what there mounted in. if its for small survey work they might be in something as small as a 172/182, that will most likely not cut it, maybe a 208 will with the turbo prop but still doubtful I could be off however but if a heavy duty van cant do it I doubt a normal GA can.

but people do survey work in small Cessna's so they have to have some sort of capability to handle it I guess. there is most likely a STC already made to increase electrical output. which almost has to be the case now that I think about it.
 
Those are Unifi Pro APs.

I love these damn APs now. Just installed about 20 of em in my location, and I love the software for them! ;)

$80, and u get management software for a wide range AP. I love it! :)
 
infiniband really??? WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I typed a huge response to this on another forum. This is the short version.

Cost of just a single 10GB 24 port switch > All cabling/cards/36port for a IB deployment at 40Gbs for our cluster.

10GB has not reached an affordable price yet.
 
thanks user/home and welsper,

welsper Really depends on what there mounted in. if its for small survey work they might be in something as small as a 172/182, that will most likely not cut it, maybe a 208 will with the turbo prop but still doubtful I could be off however but if a heavy duty van cant do it I doubt a normal GA can.

but people do survey work in small Cessna's so they have to have some sort of capability to handle it I guess. there is most likely a STC already made to increase electrical output. which almost has to be the case now that I think about it.

I can not talk about what they go on, sorry. I can say that we are not the only sensor system and our aircraft system is much smaller then the ground stations pictured throughout this thread.
 
Anybody else want to beg for an update? Always something good here!

Outside of budgeting, training, documentation, and being pulled to put out "fires" on our production line of things, I have not been getting a ton of cool stuff done. New funding for this years projects won't become available until April :(.

I am getting to travel a ton coming up soon :). Sadly no cameras allowed.
 
Back
Top