Network pics thread

Not to be harsh, but that's not really a very good example of doing a home lab on-the-cheap. You can pretty much buy his "lab" off-the-shelf on ebay: One used C6100 chassis using L5639s easily hits a lower price point than his four micro-ATX "nodes". Plus it provides housing for 12 LFF disks, has more networking, is easier to add 10Gbe (or even Infiniband) on the cheap, etc. Add the same 10Gbe switch he used and you've got more horses in 3u for less money and packaged better than his whole messy stack of boxes.

It is nice to see it written up in a more mainstream media source rather than just in the enthusiast forums and/or geek-rags.

Oh I totally agree that he could do it for A LOT less money but he seemed to want to still have the enterprise support and also gear that was similar to their production equipment but I wager you could do something similar for like a third or half of what he paid :)
 
Also if you read the article he states that the first article he wrote was how to do a budget home network lab, and that one was the lab where he said that cost was not a concern.
 
I'm not sure what part of BC you're in, Here in the Okanagan I'm paying 9c for the first 1600Kwh, and 13c after that... It hurts


LOL.. that hurts? Most of my usage is charged at 27c per kilowatt hour and 31c per killowatt hour: Oh man how I wish I was allotted 1600 kw @ 9c. The chepeast here is 13c per killowatt hour and in the summer in socal where you gotta use your A/C a ton the tier 1 usage they only allocate 465 killlowatt hours at the cheap price. What a joke... Here is what my bill looks like:




$300/month for 1324 kilowatt hours used...
 
LOL.. that hurts? Most of my usage is charged at 27c per kilowatt hour and 31c per killowatt hour: Oh man how I wish I was allotted 1600 kw @ 9c. The chepeast here is 13c per killowatt hour and in the summer in socal where you gotta use your A/C a ton the tier 1 usage they only allocate 465 killlowatt hours at the cheap price. What a joke... Here is what my bill looks like:




$300/month for 1324 kilowatt hours used...

Yeah I can completely agree with you that hurts as well.

We just recently switched to the tiered billing, 3Yrs ago I was paying 7.5c/Kwh flat rate, in the last 3 years the rates have increased by ~45%. so that kind of increase in a short amount of time hurts. but what really hurts is knowing that at my work,that's on the same grid as home, we pay 4.5c/Kwh while i'm paying 13. it's a case of business helping business and me the consumer subsidizing them.


In BC 95% of our electricity is Hydroelectic, and always has been, but it's all about "being green" dispite that BC power has the lowest carbon footprint out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electrical_generating_stations_in_British_Columbia

edit:

I should also mention thats 1600KWh /Billing Cycle, I get billed every 2 months, so it's really only 800/month, or 1600 for the first month and everything extra on the second month, however you wanna look at it.
 
Yeah I can completely agree with you that hurts as well.

We just recently switched to the tiered billing, 3Yrs ago I was paying 7.5c/Kwh flat rate, in the last 3 years the rates have increased by ~45%. so that kind of increase in a short amount of time hurts. but what really hurts is knowing that at my work,that's on the same grid as home, we pay 4.5c/Kwh while i'm paying 13. it's a case of business helping business and me the consumer subsidizing them.


In BC 95% of our electricity is Hydroelectic, and always has been, but it's all about "being green" dispite that BC power has the lowest carbon footprint out there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electrical_generating_stations_in_British_Columbia

edit:

I should also mention thats 1600KWh /Billing Cycle, I get billed every 2 months, so it's really only 800/month, or 1600 for the first month and everything extra on the second month, however you wanna look at it.


Ah. Yeah I did notice it was 2 months but its still 1600kw baseline over a 2 month period right? So its not entire equivalent to 800 kwhr per month if you have one heavy month and one light month but still I wish I could get all my power at 13c per kilowatt hour. With the tiers I am like paying almost double that. 800 kilowatt hours is a pretty good amount for an allotment if you ask me. I mean its hot here and everyone has to use A/C and the baseline amount is a measly 450 kw.
 
I'm not sure what part of BC you're in, Here in the Okanagan I'm paying 9c for the first 1600Kwh, and 13c after that... It hurts


2,100 Kwh in PG&E country (N.CA) would cost you $700/month...consider yourself lucky.
 
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What the heck? :D I live in Germany and I have to pay something like 25-26 cents (Euro, not Dollar ;) ) for 1 kWh...pretty expensive stuff :(
 
Makes me happy that I live in a condo and my heat, water, and power are all include in my rent :)

$1295/month for a 1000sqft 2 bed, 2 bath, and a underground parking spot.

Guess one of these day's I should post a picture of my gear.
 
Some more pictures from home...

First there's the networking lab, this doesn't see much use these days...


These two run, along with the tape library, look after the house services, AD, DNS etc


One can never have too much UPS...


I mostly use the blades for testing things now...
 
Have not posted pics of my setup here in a while, so here it is:


1st rack: main server rack
2nd rack: currently empty, will probably be mostly network/lab stuff as well as power equipment such as the inverter/charger. Rectifiers/inverters in the future.
3rd rack: custom battery rack I built.


Have not decided yet on acid proofing method, but I need to paint everything first anyway so will be a bit still. Got a quote for custom trays from a company, about 700 bucks. I'll look for cheaper alternatives first. :p
 
Good you put holes in that battery rack, but you will want some forced ventilation. You do not want gas build up inside it.
 
Yep those are 3" holes, ordered some 80mm fans and grilles to go there. There is one hole the same size on the side where the h2 sensor will go and that will be the exhaust.

The room itself will be forced ventilated but figured I should add fans anyway.
 
long time lerker.. Finally going to show my home lab

WiFI
wifi.jpg


Network rack / VMware server
cisco 2811 as router, vmware 5.0 soon to be 5.5.
rack.jpg
 
My home network/CCNA lab

10024906464_601eaae1e8_b.jpg


2960G is my "core" switch. The 2950 is for the uVerse TV network.

10024945185_66853d5b31_b.jpg


uVerse Gateway/Synology NAS/Spares

10091477764_0ef0001f5a_b.jpg
 
@thread

This is slightly OT, but what happened to the two "data center build out" threads? They get pulled?
 
Is that a shit ton of USB-Serial adapters on a hub? Shoulda went with a console server. I grabbed my 15 port Avocent for $50 off eBay.
 
Is that a shit ton of USB-Serial adapters on a hub? Shoulda went with a console server. I grabbed my 15 port Avocent for $50 off eBay.

At first it was a test situation, then it went "production" :(. I tried to find a reasonably priced rack mount usb hub, but couldn't.

If you have any tips on where to find one, i'm all ears!
 
what spec is that VMWare box?

Network rack / VMware server
cisco 2811 as router, vmware 5.0 soon to be 5.5.
rack.jpg

Now Vmware 5.5
LSI Logic MegaRAID SAS 8708ELP
2x 320GB sata II drives in raid 1
2x 120 gb SSD
1x 60 GB SSD (used for vswap)
28gb ECC ram
2x 3.0 GHZ Intel Zeon e5472's
supermicro x7dwn+ motherboard.

Vm's
Windows 2008 SBS
Windows 2008 r2
Cisco Call manager 8.5
Cisco unity connection 8.5
 
At first it was a test situation, then it went "production" :(. I tried to find a reasonably priced rack mount usb hub, but couldn't.

If you have any tips on where to find one, i'm all ears!

I use a Avocent CPS1610. I had to make my own console cables but they are easy to do with some CAT5, RJ46 ends and some crimpers.

Cisco makes access servers as well but they normally cost more used on eBay.
 
You'll get more rack pictures as soon as I get around do it. Bear with me, I'm working on Uni assignments at the moment so I'm kinda busy. In the meantime, here's my desk.

desk.jpg

Nice desk - what is creating that cool lighting effect on the walls and door?

Also the blade chassis is something I was looking at purchasing myself, do you leave it running all the time or on the occasion you need to test something? does it draw a lot of power?
 
It doesn't. 5.5 dropped the 32GB host RAM limit previously enforced on the 5.0/5.1 free edition, so having anything above that is no longer a waste.

Good to know! I think VMWare knows that this has opened a lot of doors for them, offering ESXi for free. A lot of us began by tinkering with it and then moving up the product chain. Glad to see they are opening the restrictions on the free version.
 
It doesn't. 5.5 dropped the 32GB host RAM limit previously enforced on the 5.0/5.1 free edition, so having anything above that is no longer a waste.

does it still have the cpu's per host restriction?
 
Carrier Ethernet rack making progress, and moving into our new NOC digs, along with a promotion to Engineer.

New Dell powerconnect. Only mention because $8 NIB network switches should always be mentioned...

20131020_145749.jpg


Need to pick up another SRX210. I wasn't sure how limited the L3 functions would be on the EX2200, but I definitely can't make it behave like an MX at all. The SRX can be made to passably, at least probably for the JNCIA-SP.

20131020_145806.jpg


Pulled the 3550's in the CCNP rack and sold them, as most of the switch sims I've been studying through have two 3560's and two 2960's.

20131020_145831.jpg


and a few of the our new NOC. We're consolidating three NOC's into one and will be going from around 45 analysts to over 100 analysts, and 12 Engineers, of which I am one. I still feel very much an "Engineer" still, but am working to remove the airquotes...

Lot's o' Juniper, E-line, E-lan, and MEF-CECP training, holding back the CCNP switch studying a bit, but I've lost my ability to earn a bonus for completing the CCNP since moving onto salary as an Engineer, so I think that will be OK. ;)

6TfPNMEH5rknq3oeTA3w5CvLXUwBe6rhQIBhYz3EfbU=w1059-h794-no





My Desk. New T3600 workstations... Thank god. No more 2.5gb ram on a 32bit OS. The penny pinchers couldn't spend the extra $50.00 for 8gb though.

And Engineer Row...

mhsw7EisLsTEpVkotP8Q-ZANf0OrO__cau9qbFQXBTA=w876-h794-no
 
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