Network pics thread

What secondhand servers would be the best for small home and medium game server ( all on esxi ).
There are alot of older poweredges and proliants for sale around me and really cheap but not sure if building my own ( probably alot more pricey ) would be better in watt usage wise.
 
What secondhand servers would be the best for small home and medium game server ( all on esxi ).
There are alot of older poweredges and proliants for sale around me and really cheap but not sure if building my own ( probably alot more pricey ) would be better in watt usage wise.
If you really care about watt usage, it's probably better to roll your own. These days, if I had to rebuild my ESXi environment from scratch, I'd probably build around Supermicro's X10SDV series of motherboard. The Intel "D" series Xeons are mighty powerful for what they are, and what you get for the price is pretty killer. Motherboard, processor, and two ten-gig links in mATX for under a grand.

That being said, the E3 series of chips aren't bad at sipping power. They're what I run right now, and I vaguely recall seeing that you can buy used E3 servers for just a couple hundred bucks - plug it in and go.
 
If you really care about watt usage, it's probably better to roll your own. These days, if I had to rebuild my ESXi environment from scratch, I'd probably build around Supermicro's X10SDV series of motherboard. The Intel "D" series Xeons are mighty powerful for what they are, and what you get for the price is pretty killer. Motherboard, processor, and two ten-gig links in mATX for under a grand.

That being said, the E3 series of chips aren't bad at sipping power. They're what I run right now, and I vaguely recall seeing that you can buy used E3 servers for just a couple hundred bucks - plug it in and go.

Yea, tho some poweredges & proliants are really cheap like 130$ but yea cpus are all old 07-2010 ect
 
Yea, tho some poweredges & proliants are really cheap like 130$ but yea cpus are all old 07-2010 ect

One thing you have to be aware of, is that the x850 versions of Dell Poweredge Servers (1850,2850), do not support VT for virtualization. So you're going to run into a problem if you want to run ESXi. Im not sure where the HP's fall as I only had experience with the Dell servers. The only exception to this is the 6850 does have VT support, but I can't remember if it was all versions or certain ones.

The price of x950 series servers have come down quite a bit in price and you can easily find dual quad core units. When I set up my small labs I had a bunch of 1850s and one 2850. It was obnoxiously loud so I would take that into serious consideration. You say you want to use this as a game server as well so unless you're co-locating it in the basement it will be loud.

Take what TeeJayHoward said but maybe not as extreme and build your own from spare/secondhand parts. You can build a pretty quite and powerful machine for the same amount as a decent used rack mount server. As cool as you think it be to have some enterprise grade gear for yourself, trust someone who thought the same thing and got rid of them.
 
One thing you have to be aware of, is that the x850 versions of Dell Poweredge Servers (1850,2850), do not support VT for virtualization. So you're going to run into a problem if you want to run ESXi. Im not sure where the HP's fall as I only had experience with the Dell servers. The only exception to this is the 6850 does have VT support, but I can't remember if it was all versions or certain ones.

The price of x950 series servers have come down quite a bit in price and you can easily find dual quad core units. When I set up my small labs I had a bunch of 1850s and one 2850. It was obnoxiously loud so I would take that into serious consideration. You say you want to use this as a game server as well so unless you're co-locating it in the basement it will be loud.

Take what TeeJayHoward said but maybe not as extreme and build your own from spare/secondhand parts. You can build a pretty quite and powerful machine for the same amount as a decent used rack mount server. As cool as you think it be to have some enterprise grade gear for yourself, trust someone who thought the same thing and got rid of them.

Thanks i'll take this in consideration, at the moment i have a older i5 running in a rackmounted case in my room but its really silent and cool temps.
 
Just redid the comms cabinet at home. Really need to do the full rack at some point. Painful job i'm not looking forward to.

Before;
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During;
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After;
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I would try making the fiber bend a little more larger, you are pushing the maximum bend radius to the max and more :)
 
So i've searched for loads of stuff, and this older supermicro socket 771 cpu E5420 like 32gb of ddr2 and some drives with an outstanding case.
Would this be something to consider buying or is it already to old, btw it has been running in a datacenter for its lifetime so it's maintained pretty good.

+ its like 100 euros as its a old friend of mine.
 
So i've searched for loads of stuff, and this older supermicro socket 771 cpu E5420 like 32gb of ddr2 and some drives with an outstanding case.
Would this be something to consider buying or is it already to old, btw it has been running in a datacenter for its lifetime so it's maintained pretty good.

+ its like 100 euros as its a old friend of mine.

The Socket 771 is old, and power hungry, but i use them at home on my 2 XW6600 EXSI machines, but they aren't turned on all the time. my 24/7 server is a Quad Atom based.
 
As rma said, the 771 stuff is VERY power hungry compared to anything newer. Power draw always translates to heat at some point, so they run quite warm as well. I'd look for something in the Xeon 5500/5600 series or newer, less power and heat, and more performance. They can be had for just as cheap also. Where are you? We can throw some ebay links out that are local to you.
 
As rma said, the 771 stuff is VERY power hungry compared to anything newer. Power draw always translates to heat at some point, so they run quite warm as well. I'd look for something in the Xeon 5500/5600 series or newer, less power and heat, and more performance. They can be had for just as cheap also. Where are you? We can throw some ebay links out that are local to you.

I live in The Netherlands, anything US is basically + 150$ shipping ect.
looking around so 300euros max actually if possible.
As enterprise stuff is not needed if its possible it would be nice, if not possible low power i3-i5 self build could be also an option in a rackmounted server for 7+ drives :)
Thanks alot
 
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Idk, I have a Dell t7400 as my main home server, and its not that bad, power bill is like 100 a month
 
Unfortunately I have no before pics. Just believe me when I said it was a mess.

Here is the cabling I yanked out that didn't go back in.


Front after: (I hate this rack with a passion BTW)

3750G 24 port
24 port patch panel
6 x Cisco 2800 Series Routers
(Back)
Cisco 3750 48 port (just an old 10/100 switch I use to vlan-connect the 6 routers on separate vlans to the 1841 back to the main 3750G up front)
Cisco 1841


Blue: Data to PCs
Green: Serial Cable to Console ports of Routers
Yellow: Uplinks (3750 in the back and to a 3750G in the main server rack)

Cable bundle:
 
Some pics of my cute new firewall for the house.
firewall0001.jpg

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http://www.amazon.com/dp/B012KJFUE4/
I stuck a 32gb msata card and 4gb stick of RAM that I already had in it.
I have it running Sophos UTM right now. So far, so good.
 
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How has that unit been for you? I am looking to swap out an SG500 52-p for one of these guys.
Just redid the comms cabinet at home. Really need to do the full rack at some point. Painful job i'm not looking forward to.

Before;
0JJSvuX.jpg


During;
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After;
7YhKKd4.jpg

IBXaWCe.jpg
 
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How has that unit been for you? I am looking to swap out an SG500 52-p for one of these guys.

Flawless. Relatively quiet, low power consumption, nice interface (shame you do need the controller running on another device though). As an alternative you could go for the Edgeswitch, which has the builtin interface.

I'm using Unifi APs too, so need the controller for those anyway.
 
Flawless. Relatively quiet, low power consumption, nice interface (shame you do need the controller running on another device though). As an alternative you could go for the Edgeswitch, which has the builtin interface.

I'm using Unifi APs too, so need the controller for those anyway.

I have a couple of AC LRs also looking to add cams next year too. I like not love the Unifi controller.
 
Just re-did some of the cabling in the rack and now have a 10Gb SR fibre from my Mikrotik CCR to my 3COM 4800G TOR switch.

Both the CCR, Mikrotik RB2011 and TOR switch are running OSPF and BGP, the RB2011 carries my 2nd ISP via an MPLS VPLS link to my CCR in case the primary 10Gb fibre dies.

The bottom 4 servers are pretty much decommissioned at this stage, the green/black fujitsu server is my main hypervisor (16 cores, 24gb ram) and then 2 sun servers/further up server (Exia) are backup hypervisors (not powered on).

For the outside cabinet cable management is as follows: Purple = Data/Bonded LAG, Blue = IPMI, Orange = Out of Band management for servers in case the hypervisors bridge interfaces go screwy...

The 4 orange fibre's you see are a 4Gb LAG to my switch in the house where all pc's/voip phones terminate. (Last photo is the in-house cabinet)

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My condo, this is a cabinet located in my entrance closet, the house was originally wired for VOIP but I re-wired all the CAT5 Keystones to 568A and crimped the ends so I can connect to my router.

I wish all houses have cabinets like this, makes things a lot cleaner, there's a hole in the bottom of the door which feeds out to my NAS that sits in the corner.

my%20network%20cabinet.jpg
 
installed some new firewalls over the break, pair of XTM515s in a cluster are now my primary routers, left the Core X550s as a secondary cluster that replaced a pfSense box I had in the rack

xtm.jpg
 
installed some new firewalls over the break, pair of XTM515s in a cluster are now my primary routers, left the Core X550s as a secondary cluster that replaced a pfSense box I had in the rack

xtm.jpg

What sort of config do you have on the XTM515s? Do they work as a pair or as a failover cluster?
 
What sort of config do you have on the XTM515s? Do they work as a pair or as a failover cluster?

yes they are in a failover cluster, the last two interfaces are just cluster interfaces between the two units (and last interface on the x core)

both clusters are in NAT mode

I know a lot of people talk crap about them but they do what I need, they are pretty fast, and have been reliable... plus you can get them pretty cheap on ebay... I got that pair of XTM515s for $420 shipped

I don't pay for the subscription services (anti-spam, anti-virus etc) since I don't really need them... and I like their application, I can do all my rules and then blow in the config all at once

note that to do a cluster they need to have the advanced license... the ones I got on ebay already had it... plus friend is a reseller for watchguard so he was able to transfer them to his account so I could do software updates
 
thats a Cisco MDS9020 4GB fiber channel switch.. all my hyperv hosts and FC arrays are attached to it... so if a VM fails over from one host to another it still has access to it's FC attached storage
 
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