Post Your Lab (PICS)

JeanM

astrogeek wrote: »

I have an APC PDU that I can remotely log in and power everything on and off as I please. It's really cool to be sitting at work at 3am on a slow night and log into my gear to test out a few scenarios without having to worry about power consumption or heating issues during these hot days!

I want one of those For now I just leave a couple devices on and turn the rest on when needed.

LinuxRacr

I'm looking into getting one of those switched PDU's as well. I have two in mind: The APC AP7900

Or this: Rack Mounted Web Controlled Redundant Power. Ships Overnight 15 Day Free Trial!

Here is another option if you don't care about it being rack-mountable:

Web Power Switch! - 15 Day Free Trial! - Ships Overnight - From $109!

Stidrvr

astrogeek wrote: »

The standard Skeletek rack isn't deep enough to hold a server, you need an expansion kit which can be bought with your rack, or separately as I did. It's better to just buy the expansion when you buy the rack even if you don't think you will buy a server because it's extremely expensive to buy it separately, (these racks are heavy so shipping from Chicago to California is very expensive!). And as I originally thought that I would never buy a server.....things changed and I ended up paying a lot more for buying them separately.

Here's a side view so you can see the expansion kit holding the back end of the server - this is the 10u expansion.

Rack before expansion kit:

Rack after expansion kit:


I not only had to buy the 10u mini rack, (8u version would have worked too), but also had to buy the 30" wheel base too because this expansion won't work with the smaller base I had. I also bought some metal brackets to hold the server, but eventually I'll probably replace that with an actual server sliding rack mount kit. Keep in mind that you will need either these metal brackets or a server rack mount kit to actually mount the server.

These pictures are a little old, I need to update them as I now have a Digi CM 32 console server and love it! Also, if you are wondering about the rack mounted PC case...that was going to be my server until the motherboard died. So now that awesome rack mounted case is sitting in the garage collecting dust Eventually I want to build a PC for who knows what, but right now I don't need that. I even upgraded it's case fans that I thought looked really sick while running!

Public Service Announcement:

I apologize ahead of time. Id like to be able to PM and keep the thread on topic but that option isnt available.

We now will resume our regularly schedule forum post.

Yeah I understand all that, what I was curious about was how they are actually mounted to the rack. At first I thought maybe the rails do work, or you made a modification. I was looking into getting the Skeletek rack but after emailing them I found out that the space between the front and back supports was to narrow for my rails. I have 3 Dell 1850's and 1 2850, I have rails for all the servers.

After seeing your new pictures, I'm guess you have the brackets that go from the front support to the rear support. The server then sits on this bracket, kind of like a shelf, Correct?

Diggs

4 - 2600xm Series Routers
2 - 2950T Switches
2 - 2950 Switches
1 - 3550 Layer 3 Switch
1 - 2511-RJ Access Server

oli356

I really like those tiny ethernet cables connecting the switches together

Diggs

Haha yeah...wasn't sure when I made them if they were going to work

inscom.brigade

Diggs wrote: »

Haha yeah...wasn't sure when I made them if they were going to work

I thought about that for my trunk etherlink etherchannel but i made 1 foot cables, and made them in a circle.
my lab photo is on page 37.

Forsaken_GA

Recently moved, and finally have an entire room to dedicate to my office, so ended up redoing my entire setup

Network gear rack, CCIE Lab gear + internal network gear



Support shelf, my ESXi boxes, my Synology NAS, and various other things like the cable modem, AP, etc.



The place where I can almost always be found if I'm home and awake



And my wall of knowledge (not quite complete yet, still some more books to unpack, and I have others spread throughout the house)

Roguetadhg

Warcraft 3

Your wall of knowledge is blurry.

Forsaken_GA

Web Power Switch! - 15 Day Free Trial! - Ships Overnight - From $109!

These are great, btw. I use one to remotely power my lab rack so I can work from wherever I'm able to VPN into the network from when remote (usually at work)

Forsaken_GA

Roguetadhg wrote: »

Warcraft 3

Yeah funny story about that. The day I bought that, I went to a movie afterward, and lost my wallet. I had just cashed my paycheck. That was *not* a fun experience. My wallet turned up a month later at a Golden Corral, sans cash of course, after I'd already gone to the trouble of replacing everything.

Your wall of knowledge is blurry.

Yeah, I don't know why that pic is so blurry on the post, it's fine in iPhoto.

Titles are as follows:

Top shelf - Practice of System and Network Administration

Next shelf - Cisco LAN Switching, MPLS Fundamentals, Routing TCP/IP 1 and 2, Network Administrators Survival Guide, CCDP ARCH book, Odom's QOS book, Internet Routing Architectures, and Cisco Certification (the old Caslow book for CCIE prep)

Next shelf - O'reily's BGP book, Linux Server Hacks, World of Warcraft programming, Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios (hrm, where the hell is my No Starch Nagios book.....), The Book of Postfix, Network Security Hacks, Postfix, SQL Bible, Pro Apache

Next shelf - Essential System Administration, PHP4 (probably time to throw that one out), Hacking Exposed, TCP/IP Illustrated Vol.1 (and where is my Comer TCP/IP book.. argh), Interconnections 2nd Edition


I used to have alot more Cisco Press books, mostly those that focused on CCNA/CCDA/CCNP exam prep, but I tend to give those books away to others who are studying once I'm done with them. The Odom book is the only exam specific book that I've ever held enough regard for to keep around as a reference manual. If I ever run into anyone at work or a friend who decides to take the CCDP, then the ARCH book will disappear as well.

I also tend to do much more digital downloading these days. Hauling my knowledgebase around on my iPad is a hell of alot more convenient than hauling the books around.

Roguetadhg

Im intrigued by the WoW programming book. Is there a story behind it?

Forsaken_GA

Roguetadhg wrote: »

Im intrigued by the WoW programming book. Is there a story behind it?

Coding mods when I was playing WoW was a hobby of mine, especially before mods got really popular and complicated. I coded some of the first boss encounter mods back in the Vanilla AQ and Naxxramas days simply because my guild needed them and they didn't exist. Other times, I wanted a mod, and I found something that was close, but not quite what I needed, so I'd hack on it until I got what I wanted, had to learn the LUA in order to make that happen.

That's not an uncommon occurrence for me. Back when I was 16, I was big into the BBS scene, and I needed some BBS utils that didn't exist, so I taught myself Pascal in order to write them. To this day, I still do that. At most every job I've ever held, I've cleaned up internal processes and scripted them to make them easier (because I'm a lazy sumbitch who'd rather look at pictures of funny cats than do repetitive tedious crap)

JeanM

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Coding mods when I was playing WoW was a hobby of mine, especially before mods got really popular and complicated. I coded some of the first boss encounter mods back in the Vanilla AQ and Naxxramas days simply because my guild needed them and they didn't exist. Other times, I wanted a mod, and I found something that was close, but not quite what I needed, so I'd hack on it until I got what I wanted, had to learn the LUA in order to make that happen.

That's not an uncommon occurrence for me. Back when I was 16, I was big into the BBS scene, and I needed some BBS utils that didn't exist, so I taught myself Pascal in order to write them. To do this day, I still do that. At most every job I've ever held, I've cleaned up internal processes and scripted them to make them easier (because I'm a lazy sumbitch who'd rather look at pictures of funny cats than do repetitive tedious crap)

Oh man, BBS scene ....!!!

Roguetadhg

oh boy. I think I was doing my two rank 14 grinds when you were farming naxx. I was too busy hacking and slashing, and trying to take a nap between the fights to keep my kills up. I developed websites because of my gaming guild, learned html/javascript/css for it. Just stuck.

Now if I only had to code in IOS for my guild, I'd probably memorize a lot of the commands by now :P

alxx

Thanks for the links to the power boards.

Did anyone notice that they also do a serial switch
1 serial to 20 (not ethernet) 20 Port RS-232 ConsoleSwitch - Just $149! - Free Trial, Ships Overnight!

Jasiono

Went to staples for a book case because my little drawer stand broke. I found clearanced items and saw a 100dollar case for 10 bucks. I grabbed it for shits n giggles and turned it into my lab lol.




I think it looks alright!

astrogeek

LinuxRacr wrote: »

I'm looking into getting one of those switched PDU's as well.

Might wanna look into Forsaken's recommendation, one issue I have with my AP7900 is it appears that the processing isn't really as powerful as it should be and it frequently hangs when I remote into it through the web interface. Sometimes it also just gets hung up and I have to physically unplug then plug it back in for it to start responding on my network. Perhaps it is just my unit, but I have read similar issues with others when connecting either via SSH or https. It's not usually that big of a deal because I only need to use it when I turn on the equipment and turn it off when I'm done, but it's enough to say I would look at something else first.

dirtyonekanobi

I've been reading this thread forever, so I thought to include some pictures of my lab equipment. These pics are before I got everything completely cabled up.

The beginning:


Currently I have:
1 x 2611XM (Console Server w/NM-32A)
1 x 2811 (FR switch with HWIC-8a)
2x 2811 (Frame Relay spokes w/Async & T1 Wics)
1x Supermicro server w/ESXi5 w/ Cisco CUCM Asterisk, MS 2008, & Linux VMs
1 x 3550 w/EMI image
2 x 2950
1 old Dell Poweredge that I desperately need to throw away

LinuxRacr

LinuxRacr wrote: »

I'm looking into getting one of those switched PDU's as well. I have two in mind:

This: Rack Mounted Web Controlled Redundant Power. Ships Overnight 15 Day Free Trial!

Here is another option if you don't care about it being rack-mountable:

Web Power Switch! - 15 Day Free Trial! - Ships Overnight - From $109!

I'm actually looking into one of these options.

pitviper

astrogeek wrote: »

Might wanna look into Forsaken's recommendation, one issue I have with my AP7900 is it appears that the processing isn't really as powerful as it should be and it frequently hangs when I remote into it through the web interface. Sometimes it also just gets hung up and I have to physically unplug then plug it back in for it to start responding on my network. Perhaps it is just my unit, but I have read similar issues with others when connecting either via SSH or https. It's not usually that big of a deal because I only need to use it when I turn on the equipment and turn it off when I'm done, but it's enough to say I would look at something else first.

Hmmm, you may have ended up with a dud unit (or flaky firmware revision). I have 2x APC 7901s and have never had a single problem with them (other than the fact that you need a proprietary serial cable to factory reset them), and they stay on for months without cycling the power.

networkjutsu

Here's mine. A little messy though.

SteveO86

Some updated pics.

From top -> bottom

SonicWall TZ210
4x 1841 -Various HWIC/VWICs
2x 2621xm - 256MB 1x NM-4A/S
2x 3750
2x 3550
2x 2960

Still need to get my 3700 mounted.


Still need more WICs, 3 BB routers, T-1 cables and an access server. All in time.

oli356

My Skeletek rack arrived from Austria today... Doesn't include the wheels =/

EDIT: After a few emails they have resent the wheels, but then I come to discover that the bottom bit (part is bent.. http://imgur.com/a/AUhHU

Abdul201288

Hi, I'm new to this forum..Just wanna upload my Pics Cisco Lab. I've seen nice looking labs.

cable management is okay. :P
1x 2651xm with a 4 port ISDN NM/ASDL/WIC and Serial WIC 1T card (from ebay)
1x 1760 with 1 WIC 1T card (dad's work,they didn't want it anymore, Same with the 2950 and the Dell PowerEdge R200)
1x 2950
Dell PowerEdge R200 with server 2008, I use it configure all the router and switch.
And OLD HP LaserJet 2200 (networked)
An extra 24-port Netgear in case something happens to the 2950..

oli356

I want an access server, but none on ebay really

All done now, just waiting on my PDU with a switch (I bought one but item wasn't as described as there was no power switch)

veritas_libertas

I've made some purchases since the last time I showed off my lab:



I really do need to purchase an Access Server, but my next purchase will probably be an ASA 5505 for the CCNA:Security.

Roguetadhg

I'm so green right now you could probably stick me in the ground and make me grow leaves.







...I gotta remember that one.

pitviper

Surprised that I haven’t seen anybody with these yet!



NEMA 5-15 to C13 Color Cords

I may pull the trigger on some yellow/blue cords at some point

JustFred

I finally had some time to organize my stuff.

1x 2511
2x 2811
1x 1841
2x 2950
1x 3560 POE
1x3550
2x 1721
Dell PowerEdge 1950 with 8gig memory for Vmware