Getting organized and new equipment

vanquish23

Well I needed to get organized as my lab is growing and the clutter is building up. So I found a 45U Tripplite 4 Post open rack on Amazon.com. I have a empty iStarUSA 4U server chassis that will be completed one day. I also found a 2U Dell Poweredge 2850 on ebay.com for $200, which is plenty for just a lab.


ImageShack.us


I made use of some ply wood laying around in my garage to keep the static down and did not want the casters to damage the carpet. Only took about an hour to unpack and set up. Can adjust from 22 inches to 38 inches. I have it set at 32 inches because I will be running the power rackmounts and other stuff in the back.

In the future, I plan to locate some thin metal to make two side panels and the top as well as two mesh doors for the front and back. Then I would like to drill 4 120mm holes on the top panels and use some computer case fans I have laying around and a PSU, which I will mount on top.

Anyway, I will post more pics soon with all the equipment in the rack.

alxx

Nice.

How stable are those castors ?

vanquish23

They are very stable to be honest. The base plates of which the casters wielded onto are think steel. There are 4 strong bolts with washers and nuts that connect the casters to the base. It makes moving around the rack easier on the plywood.

vanquish23

Well the racking of equipment is coming along. I have the 4 3550 switches' mounted, 3 of the 4 3640 routers mounted. I am waiting on the 4th 3640 mounting hardware to come in, as well as the 3660's mounts. I had forgotten about the wall mount rack I had laying in the garage, so I put my 2 Dell towers and HP workstation in the wall mount on the ground. Going to get a toogle switch power strip to mount in the wall rack and run cat6 cables to the patch panel on the rack. I have a keyboard and mouse along with a Dell monitor with a 1:4 HDMI selector. On my order list is a Catalyst 4003 (6U) switch, two 3745's, and a 2811 router to fill the gaps. I have a 1U shelf coming in the mail for the PIX and 878 Wifi router. Will also be ordering a custom 1U rack for the ASA 5505.

vanquish23

A little update. Everything is going well, but the wires are a mess. Still working out the planning of wire management. Today, I received the 1U shelf for my PIX and 878 WIFI router which is right above the monitor and above the 2511. I also got the hardware to mount the 3660 router and the 4th 3640 router. The last item is the Dell PowerEdge 2850 rack server on the bottom. Still waiting on the rail kit that will come in tomorrow. I also used one of the mointors I got from a desktop and mounted it on the rack so I can monitor the network using NAGIOS network manager. Will show pics of that later.

I found the PowerEdge 2850 on ebay for $225.

Dual Intel Xeon Processers 3.2 Ghz 800 FSB
4 GB DDR 2 SDRAM
4 UltraSCSI 146GB Drives (Suports 6 but will buy 2 more later)



Next up is ordering the Catalyst 4003 Switch and another PowerEdge 2850 or 2950.

joshmadakor

How much was the rack?

vanquish23

On Amazon for 330 including free shipping.

joshmadakor

vanquish23 wrote: »

On Amazon for 330 including free shipping.

Nice! It looks pretty good

alxx

Nice progress!
That looks like fiber cables between the gbics in the 3550's ?

vanquish23 wrote: »

Next up is ordering the Catalyst 4003 Switch and another PowerEdge 2850 or 2950.

Just wondering why a 4003 ?

That'll be one noisy room with all that running at once and nice and warm in winter.
The 3745's are just as noisy as 3660's possibly slightly louder.

dell 2950's are quite nice, we're still using them as dev and test servers with vmware at work.
(Just wish our admin would upgrade them to vsphere and not leave them running vmware server - we have licenses)

No plans for voip equipment yet?

vanquish23

joshmadakor wrote: »

Nice! It looks pretty good

Thanks! Still a work in progress.

vanquish23

alxx wrote: »

Nice progress!
That looks like fiber cables between the gbics in the 3550's ?



Just wondering why a 4003 ?

That'll be one noisy room with all that running at once and nice and warm in winter.
The 3745's are just as noisy as 3660's possibly slightly louder.

dell 2950's are quite nice, we're still using them as dev and test servers with vmware at work.
(Just wish our admin would upgrade them to vsphere and not leave them running vmware server - we have licenses)

No plans for voip equipment yet?

Cant ever have enough switches! Haha jk. No but the 4003 is cheap, and has a GBIC slot, and it just look cool with the dual power supples. I am getting one for $150, so why not. Yes those are SC fiber with modules. I am going to bring a line down to the Cat 4003 which has the GBIC slot.

Noise is high yes, but I turn on my 52 in LCD with Pandora and blast it. Just the Dell PowerEdge makes you want to stab your ears from the 10k RPM SCSI's. The switches are quiet, and the routers are not to bad. Going to get worse when I get the 2950. No VT with the 2850's but will use it for CentOS 5. The 2950 will be using vSphere or Virtual Box, whatever I have time for. Mainly going to setup call manager from SmartNet and TACAS+ server for now. I am more of a Linux fan, and try to do less Microsoft stuff.

VOIP will come later which is why I am getting the 3745's. Once I am ready for the CCVP I will get the Voice module and a couple of phones.

alxx

Could do voip using the 3640's

I spend plenty of time at work doing angstrom distribution builds for omap3.
Just starting a new fpga project, hardware turned up yesterday.

Be much better off with centos 6 or fedora 16 than centos 5.
With centos 6 you have the option of installing/using the redhat kvm based hypervisor for vm's
best thing is can get it all setup just using kickstart files
Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

vanquish23

alxx wrote: »

Could do voip using the 3640's

I spend plenty of time at work doing angstrom distribution builds for omap3.
Just starting a new fpga project, hardware turned up yesterday.

Be much better off with centos 6 or fedora 16 than centos 5.
With centos 6 you have the option of installing/using the redhat kvm based hypervisor for vm's
best thing is can get it all setup just using kickstart files
Virtualization With KVM On A CentOS 6.0 Server | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

Yes but I always wait a little while after a major release for them to work the major bugs out. But I will see how Cent OS 6 is doing. I do like that option of installing the kvm hyperervisor.

Roguetadhg

nice setup!

alxx

vanquish23 wrote: »

Yes but I always wait a little while after a major release for them to work the major bugs out. But I will see how Cent OS 6 is doing. I do like that option of installing the kvm hyperervisor.

Our admin is just upgrading all our servers to centos 6 here at work. Its up to 6.2.
6 was release back in July and they were rather slow tracking the redhat releases.

I stick with the most recent fedora release as I need the newer kernel releases and up to date development libraries.
Just updated this morning to kernel 3.2.1 . The so called bleeding edge is a lot more stable than it used to be a few years back.
Haven't had major problems since fedora 14.

vanquish23

alxx wrote: »

Our admin is just upgrading all our servers to centos 6 here at work. Its up to 6.2.
6 was release back in July and they were rather slow tracking the redhat releases.

I stick with the most recent fedora release as I need the newer kernel releases and up to date development libraries.
Just updated this morning to kernel 3.2.1 . The so called bleeding edge is a lot more stable than it used to be a few years back.
Haven't had major problems since fedora 14.

How are the upgrades going? Any major issues yet? I will check out the bug tracker and release notes for 6.2 and see how things are going.


Update: The place that I ordered my rails from for the Dell Poweredge did not send me the hardware, so I have to wait a few days before I can mount it in the rack. I also had to adjust the depth of the rack from 32 in to 28 in. That was a pain since there was already alot of weight.

Netwurk

A quick tip for freestanding rack builders. Don't start with placing your equipment at the top. It makes your rack incredibly easy to tip over. The OP has a cool rack, but the early pics show a rack that could have fallen over very easily - I take it he doesn't have kids or pets.



Put the heaviest gear (usually a server) at the bottom. The exception to this rule would be if you're in an area that has flooding problems. Then put the cheapest gear on the bottom (while still making sure the rack is not top-heavy). Then make sure you can power everything off quickly in an emergency. And shut your rack off when going on vacation. OK, enough safety tips, my fingers hurt from typing so much.

vanquish23

Netwurk wrote: »

A quick tip for freestanding rack builders. Don't start with placing your equipment at the top. It makes your rack incredibly easy to tip over. The OP has a cool rack, but the early pics show a rack that could have fallen over very easily - I take it he doesn't have kids or pets.



Put the heaviest gear (usually a server) at the bottom. The exception to this rule would be if you're in an area that has flooding problems. Then put the cheapest gear on the bottom (while still making sure the rack is not top-heavy). Then make sure you can power everything off quickly in an emergency. And shut your rack off when going on vacation. OK, enough safety tips, my fingers hurt from typing so much.

Haha thanks. Yea the light stuff started out going on top, then working my way down. The rack itself is very sturdy for a 4 post rack. The casters provide extra strength as well. No kids, one dog but is not allowed in the room. (Closed door policy). The 4U custom server case and the two dell poweredge servers are going on the bottom, 1U - 8U. Also, no flood pains around, and very little threat to power outages.

There is no way I would be able to have all these toys if I was married and/or kids. Single and enjoying it for now.