Nice lil setup

w1retap

w1retap

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jul 17, 2006
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Well, this was a little while ago, but I went down to visit my uncle in Florida who is the vice president for FECI's information systems and networking.

This setup is one of their smaller substations for their company (their secondary data center). He just got done building the whole thing by himself.. and I was like holy shit.. lol. It basically backs up all their data at a secondary location, routes their web traffic, serves their database stuff, etc. There is also a few US Gov't military servers in there as well, but he wouldn't let me know how they are using them or how they are linked into the system. The data center is basically in the crappiest looking unlabeld un-addressed warehouse that is falling apart on the outside, but looks like this on the inside. :D They chose that location/view because nobody would ever expect it to house stuff like that. It runs 24/7/365 on diesel backup power so it never fails in a power outage on the main grid. Very cool..

The small Sun Enterprise server you see sitting on the ground with the rackmount LCD on top is being shipped to my house soon.. he said its outdated and they need to get rid of it. w00t! Still don't know what I'm going to use it for, haha. It has like a dozen processors and 20 hard drives in raid in it. CS server? LOL. No, probably a sweet file/web/ftp server or something.

Pics:

One of the power conditioners/power supplies to power the racks.
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A600 data backup system
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Rack 1
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Rack 2
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Rack 3
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Rack 4
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My Sun server!!!
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VPN's, firewalls, etc.
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Backside of above..
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More VPN's, firewalls, etc..
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Switches..
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Fully managed switch :eek:
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Overhead fiber lines
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Netapp C1200's
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Cisco VPN 3000
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Gigabit like wohhh
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Redundant firewalls
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DS-3 uplink
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Juniper fiber router
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Fiber NMLI
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Fiber switch :cool:
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communications grid
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more comm grids
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rack 5
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military stuff...... shhh
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floor is all air conditioned with this stuff.. it was like 60F in there.
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This is how all the overhead stuff is routed.. very nice. Power, ground, etc..
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I don't know too much about the system and setup, because I was only there for an hour or so. I have higher res pics, so if anyone has any questions on model numbers, I can probably zoom in and see them in my full resolution pictures from my digital camera. I didn't have them high res on there, because most of the stuff has IP addresses with sticky labels on the front. I don't want to get in trouble for giving out IPs. :p
 
Alrighty.. will do. I just have to find the full res version of these pix again. They are stored on my hdd at home somewhere. I'm at work right now, and these just happened to be on my photobucket.
 
That's my idea of a florida vacation! It's always nice when you can go home with a doggie bag too! Let up know how the server works out.
 
holy, shit that is freaking badass! :drool:

You uncle looks to be very thorough in his work :D I imagine he had some help, but damn. That is one neat and clean server room. Major props there.

that is pretty much my dream job. Work with equipment of that caliber on a daily basis, and no all the ends and outs :D

bet that was fun to go through :)
 
As a CS major in college with a concentration in networking, hopes for MCP/MCSA/MCSE, and a future in network administration, my dream is to administrate such a network someday.
*continues to daydream...*
 
∞Velocitymaster∞ said:
Is this at a company?
Click to expand...
read the first sentence of my original post. Reading a post usually helps before asking questions. ;)
 
Not bad...I'd put that on par with some of the really nice Colo facilities out there.
 
:nerdgasm:

very very nice. and all by himself? I like. The 3000 VPN unit looks pretty damn nice. JSP?
 
Holy. Shit.

That is some SERIOUS kit there. I'd like, sell my left testicle for even one piece of that equipment buffet.... *drool*

For the purposes of extreme enjoyment, go and take pictures of the Primary NOC\Datacentre as well...pleeease :D
 
NMLI is nice, we have a 100mbit NMLI connection (with a T1 backup) at work... it flies (most days)

nice score on the sun stuff, if he ever has any old stuff to get rid of let me know I can pick it up (I live in Miami :) )
 
Or...moreover, it still beats my 15.645Ghz of computing power....to say the least :p

I hope to manage a place like that when I'm older *dreams* :D
 
What kind of Fibre array is attached to that McData switch? EMC Clariion perhaps? Also, is that McData a Spherion 4500 switch?
 
Thats a very clean data center... that is the way that they should all look like.
 
*just stares*

That backup system made me wince. Christ have mercy! That thing is either an IT nightmare or an IT dream...
 
:eek: And your uncle did all that by himself...

I can see putting it in by yourself; that isn't too difficult. The time it would be take would be immeasurable though (especially for a business). However, how many does he have to manage it?

I know for a fact one man cannot be a database/sys/LAN/WAN admin. He would require more than himself to install the necessary operating systems and services on each rack. I would believe 30 people would be needed to get it quickly up and running and ~5 people to keep constant management on it. So how many does he need?
 
Ockie said:
Thats a very clean data center... that is the way that they should all look like.
Click to expand...

I got to see Williams Communications Tulsa in person. The data center there was spectacular. They had NO exposed cables. It was all completely covered rack units, tubes, and air conditioning vents with white floors and walls throughout the huge room. It was "acoustically sealed" for obvious reasons... That room was l-o-u-d. I have only been around my racks I have made (one to two) for my dad's company, and a few bigger infrastructures... but Williams made my soul quake. There was at least thirty to forty racks in that one room, and they were all filled to the teeth. You can probably envision how loud that was.
 
DiceMann said:
There was at least thirty to forty racks in that one room, and they were all filled to the teeth. You can probably envision how loud that was.
Click to expand...

30 or 40 racks could be considered small. I worked a 9 month project at IBM last year and our datacenter was larger than a football field. And it was filled from end to end. Heck just the project I was working on involved more than 1500 servers and that was only about 15-20% of the datacenter.

Because of security policy I don't have any pictures of the inside, but here are some external pics.

The building in outlined in red was our DC. And for comparrison I've attached a photo of MU's football field.

DC Picture

Football Field
 
FromTheLou said:
30 or 40 racks could be considered small. I worked a 9 month project at IBM last year and our datacenter was larger than a football field. And it was filled from end to end. Heck just the project I was working on involved more than 1500 servers and that was only about 15-20% of the datacenter.

Because of security policy I don't have any pictures of the inside, but here are some external pics.

The building in outlined in red was our DC. And for comparrison I've attached a photo of MU's football field.

DC Picture

Football Field
Click to expand...

Watch out, you might poke someone's eye out with that gigantic e-pen0r of yours!
 
Any pics of the back of the server cabinets? Looks great thanks for the pics. I'm doing a data center build right now and visuals help.
 
Very nice setup props to your uncle and his team for keeping it CLEAN that is very cool. That raised floor has to be sweet. I worked in a server room along with two other people once.

Man it was cold and noisy with sixteen servers going and the local switches and PBX Tele system it was like a RATS nest....really bad.
 
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