Network pics thread

klank said:
@DLE

LOL! I love the servers on rails fully extended. Did they just leave them out like that?
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Probably fully extended and locked them... and couldn't figure out how to unlock them. Lol.
 
looks like my work, but we have expanded way too fast for our DC and network closets, being a call center and still having some analog gear for client contracts that didn't want to move off the working gear...
 
Ruoh said:
Probably fully extended and locked them... and couldn't figure out how to unlock them. Lol.
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Haha

no, basically when I do an install, I do all the cable management as well into the arms and around the racks, which people hate paying for the extra time for me to do. But then i make sure it can fully extend the rails and stuff etc, and take photographic proof.

All the other pics are just where I've gone to site to do audits etc, and the ceiling ones where from a shopping centre in the north east UK, where they were doing a lot of re-cabling work for both electrics and networking.
 
s0lid said:
Downsized my full height rack to 24U rack and bought some server goods with it. Filling in the non production stuff.

rRlcTlp.jpg


A2q0Zsa.jpg


2x R410 with E5506, 16GB ECC REG, 4x 1TB 3.5"
1x R710 with 2x E5620, 144GB ECC REG, 1x 73GB 2.5"
2x Dell 1kW UPS

None of those will actually see 24/7 use, lab and lanparty servers.
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Say thats a nice rack! :D

How are you finding the Dell R410's? power consumption ok?

I just bought a couple of R410's as I thought they were good value but haven't had them running long enough to get an accurate reading of power consumption, seems reasonable though in the time I have. Like you purely for lab use.

The R710 is nice too!
 
I saw some previous posts here about APC battery back-ups having a tendency to overcharge batteries and damage them, Since this could be a long discussion I set up a poll and thread at: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1827148

Please share your comments there.

Thanks,

Tim D.

P.S.
Ya'll have inspired me to make a few modifications to my home network, pics will be forthcoming when the parts arrive.
 
wizdum said:
You would think this would be a big business opportunity. An organization could pick up a load of hardware like that, sort it, eBay it, and then give a percentage back to the company that gave them the equipment. Though that may mess up their books since I imagine all that equipment is fully depreciated.
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No thought necessary. Trust me, there are many MANY businesses that already exist doing exactly this all over the country and around the world.

I used to have a business where I rented out dedicated servers and became quite familiar with the numerous liquidation/re-marketers/re-manufacturers that existed throughout the SF Bay Area. There are several of them throughout primarily the South Bay (San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, etc.) that sell 4-7+ year-old server and network hardware for a tiny fraction of what it cost originally. I have seen plenty of huge warehouses full of this type of perfectly good gear waiting for buyers - and bought quite a bit of it myself when I was still renting out server hardware.

For those that complain about the "waste" involved the reality is that actually nearly all businesses are not really wasting the gear you see - at all. In fact, legally they probably can't do that. Maybe in the Third World they just toss toxic PCBs on to the road side and into rivers, but not in the U.S and Europe. It's very likely that big stack of hardware in that one photo even though it was in a dumper was purchased by a liquidator and it will, in fact, be resold on eBay, Craigslist, etc. - or ultimately sold to another liquidator who will try to make a dollar off of it. The stuff was actually fairly neatly stacked and not simply tossed like it was going to end up as scrap in a Chinese landfill.

As someone who has worked in IT for the very smallest companies to the very largest Fortune 500 corporations for many years, I can say that for the larger companies (or even small/medium/semi-large corps) it simply doesn't make financial sense to try to sell old IT gear. It's easy to think this way when you're in a small 1-20 person IT shop, but it's way, way too time-consuming and tedious when you're probably decommissioning at least 1,000+ pieces of IT hardware annually. You'd end up having to pay for staff just to deal with selling off gear and for almost everyone it's just not worth it. As it is larger corp IT groups often have people who specialize strictly in "sustainability" for this very reason; i.e., to make sure their old tech. hardware is disposed of properly. The hardware was already depreciated and written off the books and a liquidator is, in fact, coming in and taking the gear off their hands. The liquidator specializes in how to safely sell off and unload this older hardware and they have streamlined selling processes they're refined and perfected over several years of being in that business.

As we all know technology changes very, very quickly. I presently work for a pretty small IT shop and still we've got a stack of around 10 6+ year-old virtualization hosts that could easily be consolidated to 3 servers or less. I am slowly getting the approvals to swap out that old hardware and most of it will in fact end up being liquidated. We've gotten good use out of it but honestly many laptops now have more horsepower than a lot of these old servers have. New gear gives you more speed, more CPU cycles, and more memory for less space, power, and cooling - often by several orders of magnitude - than gear that is 5+ years old. At some point economics dictate it's time to decom the old stuff and get new hardware that will give you more for less.
 
^^ Reality check, if no one buys it, it ends up on a ship to a 3rd world country and dumped and the country paid for disposing of it, which in turn it ends up next to a river or farm.
 
Yeah, it's the fact that larger corporations start looking at bookkeeping and forget to use their heads. It may make sense on paper but when you look at it from the outside, with some common sense, it is just insanity. I remember watching large aerospace companies throw away millions of dollars worth of tooling because they can't use it on a new project because it would be considered unfair to the other competing companies --massive waste that the taxpayers ultimately pay for just to follow arbitrary rules that most savvy CEO's learn to get around.

Gotta' love working in large companies! It's like being in the circus.
 
wizdum said:
MrGuvernment said:
^^ Reality check, if no one buys it, it ends up on a ship to a 3rd world country and dumped and the country paid for disposing of it, which in turn it ends up next to a river or farm.
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No doubt. I wouldn't be surprised if a big percentage still ends up overseas and certain hardware - old PCs, printers, monitors, etc. - typically has almost no resale value so in many if not all cases never makes it on to the resale/liquidation market.

Servers, switches, routers, firewalls, etc. probably has more long-range value to the marketplace but surely not all of it sells.

Frontline did a good story on the digital dumping grounds in Ghana. They're vast and highly, highly toxic.

In any case I should have indicated that while nearly all corporations in the West legally dispose of IT hardware that doesn't necessarily mean a big chunk of it won't end up in a steaming, toxic pile somewhere.
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Asterisk server went offline at 0310.. and filled my home server room full of smoke.. the wife was NOT happy...
the actual Sata back-plane shorted out. after 271 days online.. Great Chinese quality..
Thank you Microcenter!
time to remove soot from server case with rubbing alcohol and a tooth brush...



 
SysOps said:
Asterisk server went offline at 0310.. and filled my home server room full of smoke.. the wife was NOT happy...
the actual Sata back-plane shorted out. after 271 days online.. Great Chinese quality..
Thank you Microcenter!
time to remove soot from server case with rubbing alcohol and a tooth
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What, no Sapphire or Halon system at home??? :D
Drive still good after that or did it get fried too?
 
I have a 5 pound ABC fire extinguisher... but no automated system.. hum... sounds like this weekend project... ... arduino fire suppression system... ;)

and the drives are fine.. i had to chip some melted plastic off them. but raid is still healthy.. and i created a backup just in case...
 
Wow scary, glad it did not cause any more damage.

Never thought of using a big fire extinguisher for a DIY fire suppression system. Hmmmm that could be fun. A CO2 one would work great.
 
probably wasn't the backplane, I've had SATA power adapters do that before
 
Haven't done any updates in a while. Since moved, so here's my rack in its current state along with more toys:

P1140007.jpg
 
I think only a bit over 100TB because I have primarily 2TB drives and not all the chassis are fully populated (the Supermicro 4Us have more drive bays on the back though). Once I move those back to colo I'll probably put in the rest of the servers that I have in my storage unit in the parking garage. Not everything is actually turned on either at the moment since a couple file servers are just mirrors of each-other. Electricity is pretty cheap for me, but it all adds up.
 
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Top two are Atom systems. One runs WHS to back up my desktops and laptop. Other runs pfSense and is my router. Third from the top is pretty unique being a mini-ITX system with ECC memory, but unused currently: http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1u/5017/sys-5017p-tf.cfm

Bottom 2U is a quad 6-core system that doesn't do a thing at the moment. It used to run some VMs. Last 1U system is my VPN endpoint/router that I normally use in colo, so it will be returning there soon hopefully.
 
Wired my father's house today for Ethernet in 3 of the rooms. Power wires will be cleaned up after he runs a dedicated circuit over to the panel, we just didn't have time today so he's on his own for that one. Coaxial will be moved as well once he runs his power wires so it will all be nice and clean. They are remodeling the whole upper floor of their house next year, so I'll pull more cables then and install an AP in the ceiling.

I think I did OK considering I'm not a network pro, just a home DIYer.

rBSAHn0.jpg
 
valve1138 said:
Looks good to me. He has voip from the cable company I take it?
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Yeah, VOIP from the cable co. They like having the caller ID on the TV and I'm now aware of a way to do that with a thrid party VOIP provider like voip.ms, plus the way his promo is sorted out if he drops the phone line his bill wouldn't change much.
 
@canna

I see a D-Link DWL-2100AP. :D I still have two of those little beauties sitting in storage; I really need to put them to use...
 
Does he need that much wifi coverage in the basement? Now that the house is wired you can move them upstairs.
 
parityboy said:
@canna

I see a D-Link DWL-2100AP. :D I still have two of those little beauties sitting in storage; I really need to put them to use...
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Ha yeah, still works for them though it will be getting replaced during the upcoming remodel. It's been reliable for sure though, don't know how many years he's had that darn thing.


ryang said:
Does he need that much wifi coverage in the basement? Now that the house is wired you can move them upstairs.
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Well, that location is central in his basement while the locations of the ports are along outside walls. Their house is pretty big at ~4000 sq feet., we ended up getting better coverage by placing the the AP in the basement than near one of the newly installed Ethernet ports. WiFi reception is spotty/nonexistent upstairs. Since they will be taking the majority of the upstairs down to studs, next year we're going to put Ethernet jacks in the bedrooms as well as installing a wireless AP on the ceiling somewhere. I'm trying to convince them to install 3 APs, one for each floor, since that would be the time to do it while they have walls/flooring/etc. opened up.

As for the router, it is set to B mode for the treadmill in their workout room, which is directly above and has no Ethernet port. The treadmill only supports wireless B, which is why we have an AP setup for higher speeds to other devices. I can't recall the name of the service, but it streams pretty much any location in the world to the treadmill, so you get the right elevations, etc.to simulate running in those spots.
 
I used to have a working one of those dwl2100ap's, till something borked the firmware/nvram and i would not boot the wifi any more (serial port was throwing weird errors durring boot)
 
Less Norco and more Supermicro now! Really should take a picture with all the drive LEDs flashing.

P1140017.jpg
 
I've been slowly going all Supermicro myself...love the systems and the cases....just wish it were a little less expensive.
 
Wow that's a nice setup. I have one of those 24 bay Supermicro cases. Was over 3 grand once everything was said and done, so definitely not cheap. Mobo/cpu/ram, sata controllers, etc.
 
I do a decent job finding them on the cheap I think. Two of the three 4Us are actually 36 bay ones. Not counting disks, I spent ~$800 on the 24 bay one (1155 Supermicro board, ECC memory, Areca card, etc). Doesn't have to be expensive (unless you don't live in the US).
 
Got to work on these the other day. Some sort of in-flight wireless internet system. The entire building runs off of DC.



Thats comforting.


The site was a little difficult to get to. I don't get many work orders that list "4WD Truck" under the required tools section.
 
wizdum said:
The site was a little difficult to get to. I don't get many work orders that list "4WD Truck" under the required tools section.
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Story of my life. I work for a WISP. They'll build towers anywhere.

I work in the NOC, But I'd say I'm asked to go pull someone out a few times a month. Only one of two employees with a 4WD truck.
 
NickOlsen8390 said:
Story of my life. I work for a WISP. They'll build towers anywhere.

I work in the NOC, But I'd say I'm asked to go pull someone out a few times a month. Only one of two employees with a 4WD truck.
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Oh yeah, I also work for/am a/it's complicated a WISP. We made nice with the local water district, so they let us put whatever we want wherever we want. We just built a frame that mounted to tabs on the top of a water tank, and could probably hold 20 radios. Some of the old WW2 era stuff is a little sketchy though. I live next to an airport that used to be a major base for launching bombers and providing early warning.There are towers and water tanks everywhere. I'm just glad that I wasn't around when they put all the towers up in the winter. The only way up was via snowmobile.

 
wizdum said:
Oh yeah, I also work for/am a/it's complicated a WISP.
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LOL It's complicated. Gotcha.

Yeah, we mostly occupy commercial towers and roof tops up and down the beach. Only two water towers (Watertowers seem to be huge in the wisp industry Ha).

Since we're doing WISP porn now. Can you spot the problem with this radio?



I'll give you a hint. It was at an old customer site, Before grounding was a thing. The rocket was in an ARC panel. Toasted. Melted the ethernet every spot it touched the rohn tower. Blew through the lightning protectors like they were just fire accelerant. Melted the POE's and routers.

It was a fun day.
 
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