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Network pics thread

Top two enclosures are 400GB drives, other two are 250GB. So at least 12TB of space there. (I'm accounting for raid/hot spare etc, being generous) The beauty is that they are sata so I could fill that with like 2 or even 3TB drives if I really wanted to.

From my understanding once I present it to the server via the HBA card, it will see individual drives. If that is the case, I will use MD raid. Need the specialized storage management software to do actual hardware raids, though I might also look into that. The way that SAN works, you just pick the drives, and make a raid, so it's actually a rather simple SAN compared to today's that auto shift data around and what not.

Should be fun to play with, but I rather wait till I can run more power so I can have it connected properly without using a ton of power bars. Think I'll just run a sub panel LOL.
 
My first real contribution to this thread (click for original full-size image):





I don't know what to do with these. :(
 
RE the orange racks...someone I know has custom made orange sound racks for various kinds of gear.
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Pictures from my work place, taken across two sites, from the different MDF and IDF to use ciscos terminology enjoy, ill try to help out identifying what everything is if anyone has any questions




























 
Newly Re-purposed
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The server is a Compaq Sr1620nx
AMD Sempron 3400+ 1.99 G Hz 960 MB of RAM
With 822.48 GB Total HDD Space
690.13 GB Usable Space
Running Backups for 4 Systems
Add-INS:
@WHSTweet
uTorrent
Media Connect Controller
My Movies Database
TwonkyMedia
PS3 Media Server

The CD-Drive is a friends drive

And The Cat is tired after a all-nighter of server admin
 
Haha that cat looks exactly line mine.

Nice pics, dle. I see lot of money there. :D Love the wires on the floor LOL, is that during some kind of huge overhaul, or is that always like that?
 
He was a stray we found out in the country, now though you would think he was hand raised
 
Jay_oasis said:
3 x EQ SANs?
Click to expand...

yeah :D explanations below

Red Squirrel said:
Haha that cat looks exactly line mine.

Nice pics, dle. I see lot of money there. :D Love the wires on the floor LOL, is that during some kind of huge overhaul, or is that always like that?
Click to expand...


Yeah, basically we have implemented VDI across both sites, we are using thinclients/dumb terminals called Igels, and the virtual machines are all windows 7. We have also reduced the majority of our servers down to a few physical boxes, and the reset virtual.

I mainly get to mess about with the cisco kit side of the network.

we have two cisco cat 4500's as our cores,
and then for each building across the two sites, we have multiple 3750 stacks. Usually around 5 of them all stacked together.

We do have older equipment still in use which are 2950's and 2960's on some floors of older buildings.

The actual backbone between the SANs holding the VDI's between each other and out to the network are on Ten Gigabit links, and then down to a Ten gig link to the stacks aswell, if that makes sense.

However two of my collegues from my second job went to a presentation held by Fluke networks actually on 10 gig networks, apparently you don't get ten gig, its limited by the OS, with windows you get around 3 to 4 gig, with linux you can get up to 7gig with some newer "beta" drivers that are out there, so as they were saying, its not that we don't have the hardware, we just don't have the drivers to keep up with it. haha

And the wires on the floor, were basically put in from an overhaul, and are now looking to be staying like that, which is great when your trying to work on the rack sat to the left of the picture :|
 
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this is just a picture of an old old monitor we removed a few weeks ago, it has a vga cable, but on the back of the monitor, the connections are all split up.

unfortunately no-one will have this bit of cracking kit :(
 
My Home-LAB Stuff


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Juniper Stuff:
==============
- 1x SRX100B
- 1x SRX210HM with ADSL2+PIM
- 2x SSG5 Base
- 2x Netscreen 208 Active/Passiv
- 1x Netscreen 5XT

Cisco Stuff:
=============
- 2x 2620XM
- 2 x Catalyst 2940 (one not mounted)

Other Stuff
================
1x Level One GWS-1676
1x Level One Router 1641A
1x Linksys WAG AP
1x Airport Express


3x Vsphere Hosts Intel E8400 with each 8GBRAM with ISCSI SAN
Total Storage : 8TB

-Piccolo
 
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There is a lot that you can do with a home lab, but it really depends on what you on gearing for. Cisco? VMs? A little of everything? Most of us, well, do all of the above. It all depends on what you want to do, and what you want to learn.
 
Most of my stuff is actually production/test. I run a couple web sites, so I need a web server and DNS test bed, and a development area, I also run a game server, so I have many test/dev/staging environments that code goes through before going live, and just misc stuff like my home email, spam filtering and such. Started off as a learning thing, then ended up getting to the point where I depend on it, so I consider it all production now.

That SAN I posted, that's mostly a play toy, maybe going to use for backups or just learning more about fiber chanel (which, imo is probably a dying tech due to iSCSI and 10gbps over copper, but still fun to learn and play with). Now that I have a rack, I will have more room for "lab" stuff too. I don't actually host anything in my house other then a test game server that users can logon to to try different gear and stuff. I have 6 VMs running and they're more or less production.

I've been wanting to setup a AD environment lab though but have not gotten to it yet. One thing labs can be real good for is getting ready for certs, or just learning more about certain things.
 
you can easily test /setup several systems / network topologies / simulating bandwith and so on...
that was the main goal of building this homelab, but it was also fun...

i have now about 50 different vm´s stored on my homelab san ... (different ms systems / different ms ad topologies for testing, different *nix systems...)
so you can put your test environment offline, and take it out when you have / will do some tests again.

in "production" there are 2 juniper devices, a virtual utm solution, virtual ssl vpn cluster-gateway / mail server / wiki and a honeypot.
cisco was "only" for certification, but now offline, since i have the juniper equipment... :)

the main reason for this lab were / are the security certifications and to do some "core" tests where is possible, befor to put them in production...
but also to keep the skills up2date...

so there are many reasons why to make a homelab..., not only for a christmas tree :)
 
@dle1232003

I like the blade center. We were considering that next year too! All thought I don't think we ready for it. What did you put in for networking? The all Pass through modules?
 
calvinj said:
@dle1232003

I like the blade center. We were considering that next year too! All thought I don't think we ready for it. What did you put in for networking? The all Pass through modules?
Click to expand...

basically the vm's sit on the dell san's, which have a dell 10 gig switch used to give a link between the sans and the dell blades,

pointing out towards the rest of the network, as explained before, thats via 10gig modules to the core switches, at either site, and and also there is 10gb links directly to some of the stacks set up in the building, for example, we have VDI implace in a room with 100 pc's therefore it has a straight link to the blades/san's
 
Thanks, I'm quite happy myself with what I have so far. The cable management could be better, but I'm not doing anything too intense until I build my power strips, as I'll probably build the cable management right in. I'm thinking just screw eyes along the edges, where I can twist tie wires, or something.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Thanks, I'm quite happy myself with what I have so far. The cable management could be better, but I'm not doing anything too intense until I build my power strips, as I'll probably build the cable management right in. I'm thinking just screw eyes along the edges, where I can twist tie wires, or something.
Click to expand...

what about a piece of 2"-3" pvs screwed to the side with some holes drilled into it for the cat 5 to run up and down through ?

Sounds cheesy but could work good.

Remember to keep the cat5-6 on one side away from the electrical :)
 
Yep that's a Sphereon, I'm not sure the model number off hand but 4700 sounds right. I can confirm when i get home.

The storage devices are IBM san enclosures. They interface with that switch, somehow. Not sure how to set it up but will be a learning experience. Back at work the sans were daisy chainned off each other but I'm hoping to use each enclosure individually so I can leave one on and rest turned off and only turn on when needed so they'll go straight to the switch. The beauty is that it uses sata drives.

Edit: Just checked, and it's a Sphereon 4500 and the SAN is a IBM 1710-10U EXP100
 
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the IBM units are disk shelves, do they have the filer heads in them? if not, you can use them as just a DAS, otherwise you'll need a filer head.
 
pretty sure they're just the disk shelves, you'd need a DS4000 to actually have a SAN, right now they'd just make decent DAS boxes. You can pick up cheap Qlogic fiber HBA's for your servers and use them that way, or try to find a cheap used IBM DS filer.
I've got a Ds4700 at work, but don't really use it much, all the production stuff is netapp.
 
Ohhh I think I know what you mean. The bottom enclosure was actually a fiber enclosure and was considered the "master". My coworker got that one. The other enclosures daisy chainned off it.

I have a bunch of HBAs already too, just need a box to put them in. Hesitating on if I want to use my main server or build a dedicated "SAN" box which will just convert to iSCSI or something. According to my coworker, the computer will see the drives individually, so from there I can use openfiler or just straight out Linux to make a SAN/NAS. I might play around with the IBM software too but I kinda like the idea of software raid just because it's less proprietary. For now it's just a Christmas tree. LOL I'm also thinking, it would probably use less power if I filled that with green drives. Something for the future if I end up using it full time.
 
feel free to send one my way if you grow tired of it ;) all my drive enclosured are SCSI and FC, I'd like to have a SAS or SATA disk shelf, fill it with big cheap disk for music and movies.
 
first try at omnigraffle. I finally picked up some cisco gear from a buddy so I have been tinkering around for a while today.

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I have to post a clean pic of the desk area too since it is only messy when I am playing with stuff ;)

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