Finished building my rack

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!

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Comments

sides14

While the comment is normally reserved for the ladies, nice rack? $2K is a great deal.

NightShade03

That sir, is awesome! Def jelous. I'll bet that makes quiet a racket when they are all fired up though

veritas_libertas

Very nice! How much was the (actual) rack that you mounted all of it on?

veritas_libertas

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Now I have to figure out what to do with all the old crap that this stuff replaced!

I'll drive down to Georgia and pick it up from you

aordal

Nice star wars guys on top there.

Forsaken_GA

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Very nice! How much was the (actual) rack that you mounted all of it on?

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.

Forsaken_GA

aordal wrote: »

Nice star wars guys on top there.

It's not Star Wars! Star Wars is for dorks!

[size=-10].... it's a Ringwraith[/size]

Forsaken_GA

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I'll drive down to Georgia and pick it up from you

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

TheShadow

great properly aligned for maximum harmonics. cables can be moved for fine tuning outstanding.

Real men appreciate a nice rack!

keenon

enjoying the humm of the gear. hmmm network gear.. did i notice action figures up there? do they have the kung-fu grip?

Forsaken_GA

keenon wrote: »

enjoying the humm of the gear. hmmm network gear.. did i notice action figures up there? do they have the kung-fu grip?

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.

keenon

cool, I just ordered some parts from ebay to finish consolidating it down to 1 pc

Mrock4

Very nice! I'm in the midst of building almost an identical rack, although I'd *like* to incorporate a server in there somewhere to mix things up. Let us know how it works out

dynamik

I would have rather seen a picture of that much money going into your wife's...

veritas_libertas

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

[SIZE=-10].... it's a Ringwraith[/SIZE]

Ah, a Tolkien person! That would explain the picture of Aragorn to the left.

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

Bummer...

Forsaken_GA

Mrock4 wrote: »

Very nice! I'm in the midst of building almost an identical rack, although I'd *like* to incorporate a server in there somewhere to mix things up. Let us know how it works out

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.

dynamik wrote:

I would have rather seen a picture of that much money going into your wife's...

No wife, and trust me, the lady I'm seeing doesn't need it.

veritas_libertas wrote:

Ah, a Tolkien person! That would explain the picture of Aragorn to the left

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

Mrock4

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

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.

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.

Forsaken_GA

Mrock4 wrote: »

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

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.

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.

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

Mrock4

Sounds like a solid plan. I considered the CCIP, but for personal reasons (ie: family), I'm going to go straight to the IE. I'd like to eventually go back for the SP track assuming things go well. Although I have a strong interest in the SP technologies, I feel R&S would benefit my career more.

We shall see. What part of GA are you in? I was supposed to head up to Augusta in late 2010.

Forsaken_GA

Mrock4 wrote: »

Sounds like a solid plan. I considered the CCIP, but for personal reasons (ie: family), I'm going to go straight to the IE. I'd like to eventually go back for the SP track assuming things go well. Although I have a strong interest in the SP technologies, I feel R&S would benefit my career more.

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

When I decided to do the CCIP, the only question mark was MPLS, but I think MPLS is cool technology. When they announced the changes to v4 R&S and MPLS was becoming part of it, I felt my decision to pursue the CCIP first was vindicated. So really, I'm just doing focused CCIE study and getting another certification out of it in the process hehe

I'm in the burbs of Atlanta, about 30 miles north of the city

NightShade03

I was in your general area recently. We have a remote office down in ATL. I had never been before, its pretty nice place.

Mrock4

Saw the pic of your rack...........

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

Forsaken_GA

Mrock4 wrote: »

Saw the pic of your rack...........

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.

Mrock4

I was going to do the same thing to get it up and running, but after her comments, eh..things may change. You also have to know that the rack will be next to our "computer cubby" in the living room, so guests will have to stare at the beast..if it was in a dedicated computer room or otherwise out of sight, I wouldn't really care what it looked like to be honest!

qplayed

nice its almost identical to my rack here.
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?

Forsaken_GA

qplayed wrote: »

nice its almost identical to my rack here.
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?

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

qplayed

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

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

Console> (enable) sh module
Mod Slot Ports Module-Type               Model               Sub Status
--- ---- ----- ------------------------- ------------------- --- --------
1   1    2     1000BaseX Supervisor      WS-X6K-SUP2-2GE     yes ok
15  1    1     Multilayer Switch Feature WS-F6K-MSFC2        no  ok
2   2    2     1000BaseX Supervisor      WS-X6K-SUP2-2GE     yes standby
16  2    1     Multilayer Switch Feature WS-F6K-MSFC2        no  ok
3   3    16    1000BaseX Ethernet        WS-X6416-GBIC       no  ok
4   4    48    10/100BaseTX Ethernet     WS-X6348-RJ-45      no  ok
5   5    48    10/100BaseTX Ethernet     WS-X6348-RJ-45      no  ok

Mod Sub-Type                Sub-Model           Sub-Serial  Sub-Hw Sub-Sw
--- ----------------------- ------------------- ----------- ------ ------
1   L3 Switching Engine II  WS-F6K-PFC2         SAL064583LJ 3.3
2   L3 Switching Engine II  WS-F6K-PFC2         SAL06478ZTR 3.3

SysAdmin4066

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

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.

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.

Mrock4

SysAdmin4066 wrote: »

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.

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!

SysAdmin4066

Best feeling ever, being a homeowner. It's a lot of responsibility, as you're on your own, but at 25 we bought a 3100 sqft 4 bed 3 bath house, with a loft, brand new built per our specs, just about 2 and a half years ago. It was an awesome feeling, second only by the birth of a child and your wedding day. Good luck, it's also the biggest headache known to man. Signing the paperwork is killer, its like a novel. Or a CCIE workbook