Finished building my rack
Forsaken_GA
Member Posts: 4,024
in CCIE
Got some extra money at the end of the year, decided to go ahead and build out my rack in preparation for the CCIE.
Picture be here
1 x 3640 w/ NM-2E2W + WIC-1T
1 x 3640 w/ NM-2E2W + NM-4T
1 x 3640 w/ NM-1E2W + WIC-1T + NM-1FE-TX
1 x 2611XM w/ NM-4A/S
1 x 2610XM w/ NM-4A/S
1 x 2610XM w/ 2 WIC-1T
2x 3550-24PWR
1 x 3550-48
1 x 3550-24
1 x 2620 w/ NM-8A/S
2 x 2501
1 x AS2511-RJ
It pains me not to have proper cable management, but I did the best I could with the limited space I have. Maybe when I move in about a year or so I can make it look prettier. Still a little bit of work I need to do (need a couple AUI's for the 2501's, had to plug the cat5 into the aux ports so I could get an idea of what my cable runs would look like), and I may change out a pair of 3550's for 3560's next year if cash flow allows it (otherwise I'll end up renting some rack time to be able to play with 3560 features when I need to).
It's built to the INE rack standard as much as possible (substituted 3640's for the 1841's, repurposed a 2620 as the BB1/Frame Relay switch since it was cheaper to buy the NM-8A/S than a 2522) and obviously 2 more 3550's in place of 3560's.
All told, it ended up costing me just over $2k, including cables, shipping, etc.
Now I have to figure out what to do with all the old crap that this stuff replaced!
Picture be here
1 x 3640 w/ NM-2E2W + WIC-1T
1 x 3640 w/ NM-2E2W + NM-4T
1 x 3640 w/ NM-1E2W + WIC-1T + NM-1FE-TX
1 x 2611XM w/ NM-4A/S
1 x 2610XM w/ NM-4A/S
1 x 2610XM w/ 2 WIC-1T
2x 3550-24PWR
1 x 3550-48
1 x 3550-24
1 x 2620 w/ NM-8A/S
2 x 2501
1 x AS2511-RJ
It pains me not to have proper cable management, but I did the best I could with the limited space I have. Maybe when I move in about a year or so I can make it look prettier. Still a little bit of work I need to do (need a couple AUI's for the 2501's, had to plug the cat5 into the aux ports so I could get an idea of what my cable runs would look like), and I may change out a pair of 3550's for 3560's next year if cash flow allows it (otherwise I'll end up renting some rack time to be able to play with 3560 features when I need to).
It's built to the INE rack standard as much as possible (substituted 3640's for the 1841's, repurposed a 2620 as the BB1/Frame Relay switch since it was cheaper to buy the NM-8A/S than a 2522) and obviously 2 more 3550's in place of 3560's.
All told, it ended up costing me just over $2k, including cables, shipping, etc.
Now I have to figure out what to do with all the old crap that this stuff replaced!
Comments
SE Notebook
I'll drive down to Georgia and pick it up from you
The relay rack may or may not have fallen out of the truck at an opportune location for later retrieval when we were in the process of moving our data center last year.
It's not Star Wars! Star Wars is for dorks!
[size=-10].... it's a Ringwraith[/size]
Trust me, it's not worth the gas. Few 2610's and 2611's without max memory/flash, few 3500XL's, some 2900 series catalysts that are 2U and would make great boat anchors (they run CatOS). I can't even the crap away to friends and co-workers. So I think Best Buy will be getting them for their recycling program
Real men appreciate a nice rack!
Believe it or not, the rack is pretty quiet. One of my servers has a cpu fan that sounds like a jet engine, so it pretty much drowns everything else out.
And yes, the action figures used to reside on top of the book shelf that the monitor in the picture now occupies, so they opted to acquire a view and hold dominion over the rack.
Ah, a Tolkien person! That would explain the picture of Aragorn to the left.
Bummer...
Underneath the PDU, the black background is my stack of servers. Except for the little notebook sized server, the rest of them are dual homed, you can see them plugged into the high numbered ports on the bottom 3550. This allows me to put traffic through the rack without having to screw with my normal home network.
No wife, and trust me, the lady I'm seeing doesn't need it.
LOL, I didn't even notice that got caught in the mirrors reflection. Yeah, I guess the secret's out, Turgon isn't the only Tolkien fan with CCIE aspirations hehe
Nice. I wasn't able to look at the picture..was filtered out by my LAN here. I'll check it out when I get home. I'll probably end up running Ubuntu with VMWare server on the server once I obtain one. I've scouted around a bit, but the server is lower on my list of priorities, first are all the essential lab gear. My setup will be very similar..can't wait. Gotta love tax return
When do you plan on taking the written? If it's around the same time as myself (I'll say May to June), maybe we could meet up on chat and review a bit or something. It's hard for me to estimate the time I'll be taking the written because of the amount of material covered, plus I will need to brush up on some subjects as well.
Hehe, yeah, I already had the servers, they're my 'old' desktops that got migrated to server status when I built a new box, except for the hardback book sized server. It was something I bought on purpose to replace an old power hog of a box, it's functioning as my web server.
My goal is to pass the written almost a year from today (Jan 31, 2011). I'm doing CCIP first, so that will consume the first half of this year. After that, I'll get the Written in as soon as I can, but it's not a real rush, as I plan to study for the Written as though I'm going to take the Lab, that way I can reduce my turn around between Written and Lab
We shall see. What part of GA are you in? I was supposed to head up to Augusta in late 2010.
I consider CCIP as, more or less, just another facet of CCIE study, since BGP and QoS aren't topics that the R&S CCIE overlooks
I'm in the burbs of Atlanta, about 30 miles north of the city
SE Notebook
My wife is gonna be so pissed at me..haha.
You're right about the CCIP. I was on the same page for a while, I just have a tendency to derail, and wanted to make sure I had a clear goal in mind, or else I'd do CCIP, then end up like those weirdo's studying CCVP :-/
Edit: After showing her the pic of the rack, she put "cable management" in our CCIE rack agreement
Yeah, it pains me that I couldn't arrange for the cable management attachments for the rack to fall off the truck as well. I could have also done my cable lengths better instead of just buying 3ft cat5 for everything, that's something I may correct at a later date.
I need to upgrade the 3550's to 3560's also, and like yours its built to INE specs. I need to get rid of the 2950G's. Hopefully this year I can upgrade the switches. What IOS are you running on your 3640's?
you intend to get across, then it is not focused
well enough.
—Charles Osgood, TV commentator
Ah, you've got a 6500! What kind of sup's are in there, and do you have MSFC's (I'm assuming they're not sup720's hehe)
I'm running c3640-jk9o3s-mz.124-5a.bin on the 3640's
I've got 10a on my 3640's. Dual Sup2
you intend to get across, then it is not focused
well enough.
—Charles Osgood, TV commentator
It was a pain, but I custom cabled my rack for Ethernet, the switch cables are literally about 6 inches. I also got really short serial cables but no cable management. The office is pretty much my domain and I have a pretty large house, so I dont have to worry about anyone being unhappy anyway. Benefits of moving away from the cities, 3000+ sqft "affordable" homes. Nothing is really affordable in cali though.
Next Up: CCIE R&S Lab
Unless I lose my motivation, I plan on custom cabling the ethernet also, but the serial cables will probably need some cable management..we'll see. We are looking at buying a new house right after my lab attempt..too bad it won't be before the attempt!
Next Up: CCIE R&S Lab