What kinds of equipment do you see at work?

So since I started my job at the telco I have seen a LOT of different hardware types. It definitely isn't an all Cisco world. We work with Cisco, Alcatel, Lucent, Nortel and a bunch of other random stuff. I have to admit I am not a fan of the Alcatel stuff at all. The commands on them very way too much from box to box for me to like.

What stuff do you work with and where do you find info on it?

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Comments

kalebksp

One of the coolest pieces of equipment I have at work is the IRIS Van. Not exactly networking equipment, but still neat.

brad-

We have a server that probably weighs a ton running AIX + Informix. It actually has a GUI, but nothing is intuitive coming from windows.

miclch

i think cisco is still the king in networking equipment. they are the strongest company compared to the others.

Mmartin_47

Well at my dads work at least, I don't work. Theres plenty of stuff.

6 StorageTek Nearline tape silos
Cages and cages of Dell servers (mostly 2950 series)
Few IBM system z mainframes
Racks and racks of cisco equipment.
Racks of patch panels
Our new Sun SL8500 (5 librarys)
Few sun rack mounted equipment
Handful of other tape librarys and a few IBM optical librarys
Hitachi servers

and a whole bunch of other PBX equipment in our TCC (telecommunications control center) room.

As for operating system wise, we run I believe XP Pro, Unix, and 2003 server. We also run SAP and Oracle.

astorrs

Mmartin_47 wrote: »

...
Our new Sun SL8500 (5 librarys)
...

Sweet! Depending on what they installed inside them, you could scale that to 50k tape slots and 320 tape drives all working together.

This must be a large data center as those libraries alone are a little over 250 sq ft of floor space.

Mmartin_47

astorrs wrote: »

Sweet! Depending on what they installed inside them, you could scale that to 50k tape slots and 320 tape drives all working together.

This must be a large data center as those libraries alone are a little over 1200 sq ft of floor space.

We are a 45,000 sq foot datacenter. Yeah right now we have 1 drive for testing purposes. We need to partition the library to work with multiple platforms. But I was down there visiting my pops at work and we ran a test from the console to mount a tape. We have it ready to be filled with T10000 tapes. I got a chance to open the cartridge access port and load the tape in. Robot did an audit and picked it up, placed it in its cell. We then issued commands to eject it. All went well. Now our other datacenter in San Francisco is getting one installed too. I was surprised that they actually own it. Yeah it's big, in fact they had to retrofit the floors to hold all that weight. We do plan on filling it to its max of 64 drives. There isnt 320 drives, just 64.

Mmartin_47

astorrs wrote: »

Sweet! Depending on what they installed inside them, you could scale that to 50k tape slots and 320 tape drives all working together.

This must be a large data center as those libraries alone are a little over 1200 sq ft of floor space.

Also another thing one of my pops employees, we decommissioned 1 StorageTek Nearline tape silo. Yes we own them too, I was shocked. Anyways he took it home (just the exterior). Now it sits in his backyard as a shed. LOL

arwes

The first thing I noticed weird here was the MikroTik router. Our networking is outsourced, and supposedly the guys were big into Cisco equipment until they tried out MikroTik. It works okay, but the support is abysmal.

Everything else here is run of the mill. HP servers (save for a Dell Poweredge rackmount we bought off Ebay for $60), Dell switches and Dell workstations & laptops.

astorrs

Then you only have 1 library (not 5) as 64 is the max for a single library.

I also made a type on my original post as to the sq ft, should have been 250 sq ft - not 1200 that would be insane! And since its only a single library, 50 sq ft - still big though.

Mmartin_47

astorrs wrote: »

Then you only have 1 library (not 5) as 64 is the max for a single library.

I also made a type on my original post as to the sq ft, should have been 250 sq ft - not 1200 that would be insane! And since its only a single library, 50 sq ft - still big though.

Oh I see. I was looking at their website, and I know it's somehow expanded. I think it's actually double the size. I know we have more than 1,448 slots. Just judging by the picture, it's double.

astorrs

Mmartin_47 wrote: »

I know we have more than 1,448 slots. Just judging by the picture, it's double.

1,448 is the base configuration, a single library can be expanded to 10,000 slots (and 7 libraries can be linked together and can even pass tapes around).

At some point (when someone wants it I assume) they will be scaling beyond 7 libraries.

Mmartin_47

astorrs wrote: »

1,448 is the base configuration, a single library can be expanded to 10,000 slots (and 7 libraries can be linked together and can even pass tapes around).

At some point (when someone wants it I assume) they will be scaling beyond 7 libraries.

Seems like we have 10,000 slots. It's going to be fun loading all the tapes in.

astorrs

Mmartin_47 wrote: »

Seems like we have 10,000 slots. It's going to be fun loading all the tapes in.

At ~40 a time, it'll probably take a few hours. Ick.