It's lived in my basement a few years now. It sat for nearly a year with only a couple of UPS's hanging in it, but over the years I've gotten more and more rack mounted hardware. You can really get good deals on old big iron servers on ebay and elsewhere. To most people a dual P3 500 with a GB or RAM in a big old 5U rackmount case is an eyesore and a doorstop. To me it's gold, to each his own.
Weekend before last I finally decided to get some of my rackmount computers actually *in* the rack, instead of just piled atop one another and sitting on shelves. Now my rack doesn't have any fancy "rails" or anything on it. You stick the server where you want it to go and you bolt it in.
I fought with that thing for a good hour and a half. I had about a 2 foot gap below where I wanted to mount the server, I used everything from books to old DAT drives lifting it in incriments till I got it where I wanted it.
One computer - sore shoulders and elbows and wrists...ugh. Looking at the computers I had and the equipment already in the rack (network switches and stuff) I decided I'd needed a better tool.
So I spent another hour on the internet looking for a rack jack, scissor lift table, whatever you want to call it. A little cart I could stick a server on, roll it up to the rack, jack it to the right height then slide back into position...
What a waste of an hour. Harbor Freight (www.harborfreight.com) had a nice little hyrdraulic lift table on sale for $199 in the store $249 in the catalog - that lifts to a whopping 34 inches! Too short, I could mount the sicssor lift part on a different cart and frankencart it all together, but then I couldn't move lower stuff.
Seems my only other option is a $5000 professional solution that you drive around like a standup forklift - quite a ways out of my budget with all kinds of buttons and electric motors and stuff.
Anyway, didn't find what I was looking for - if you have make/model/where to buy info on such a little rolling lifting table I'd sure like to hear about it. But in the mean time...I have Jer!
Jer is one of my minions, in exchange for helping him try and resurrect a dead dell precision motherboard he was my whuppin boy - We managed to get the whole rack re-organized in a couple of hours, would have taken me all day and part of the next without his help. So, a person, in this case was the right tool for the job - cost me a couple pepsi's.
So, with no further ado - the current state of The Rack:
(top to bottom)
"DSL Modem / Motorola WAP - 1U (Actually sitting on top of "Cricket")
"Cricket" Generic Intel PII 450 256MB RAM 0GB HDD - m0n0wall BSD Based Firewall - 4U
HP 100TX 12 Port Ethernet Switch - 1U
Gap for network cables - 1U
"Magrathea" Generic Intel P3 866 512MB RAM ~160GB RAID5 - FreeNAS - BSD Based Fileserver - 4U
Gap - I'll probably put a monitor in here eventually, maybe a shelf. - 10 U
KVM - 8 Port PS/2 Switch - 1U
AC Power - One switch - three jacks - older than dirt 15AMP - 1U
"Heart of Gold" Dell PowerEdge 2400 Dual Intel P3 933 2GB RAM 50GB RAID5 - 2003AS Active Directory Controller - 5U
APC SmartUPS 3000 - 5U
"Bistromath" Dell PowerEdge 2300 Dual Intel P3 550 256MB RAM 120GB RAID5 - FreeNAS BSD Based Fileserver - 5U
APC SmartUPS 3000 - 5U
And that's it! I've got a couple of swanky new 8 socket 8 switch rack mount power strips coming in shortly that will go above and below the KVM.
"Heart of Gold" is not currently up and running in the rack. It's actually currently handled by a little Compaq proliant Dual P2 400 desktop case unit. I need some time to get the new system setup and configured, then I'll break all my domain trusts and move the AD to the box mounted in the rack listed above.
"Magrathea" is a new build for me, and is currently doing nothing. It wasn't until after I had it mounted up in the rack that I found out the CD drive is dead so I can't get FreeNAS to install. I'll need to pull it down, swap out the drive, LOAD THE OS BEFORE I MOUNT IT BACK ON THE RACK THIS TIME - then mount it back in the rack...haha. Once it's up and running I'll be moving a bunch of files from my workstation - "Zarquon" to it and setting up a FTP server for Rex's Private Reserve.
Once we got this all mounted I spent about two more hours getting "Cricket" running correctly, should have taken 45 minutes but it uses a floppy disk to store the system configuration file (no hard drive necessary) and I had a bad piece of media - Five cents of media cost me an hour and fifteen minutes...sigh. Then I switched over and pulled the Siemens single port router I'd been using for NAT firewall. M0n0wall gives me a lot more control and options over things like traffic shaping and PTP VPN stuff.
Getting "Cricket" installed meant it was time for a big change in the IP network I run in the house. Sooo many systems and multiple DNS servers/DNS visibility issues - it was time I do have a DHCP pool available from cricket for new systems or people that might visit, but I hard coded most others:
Techosaurus LAN configuration (House) 192.168.123.1 /24
Cricket 192.168.123.1
WAP 192.168.123.2
PrintServer 192.168.123.3
.4 ->.9 are reserved for other access devices/routers and such.
I had to reset to default and reconfigure the Motorola WAP and the Linksys print server, updated firmware while I was at it too. Then had to remap the Brother 1440 laser in my wifes office to the workstations.
.10 Zarquon XP P4 3.0 2GB RAM 1.2TB SATA (My machine)
.11 Lintila XP P3 1000 1GB RAM 40GB (My wife's box)
.12 Fenchurch Win2k P3 500 512MB 20GB (my kids machine
.13 Lucy Win2k P3 500 512MB 20GB (this machine sits without a monitor, keyboard or mouse, we use VNC to remote into it and run the scanner tucked away in my wifes sewing room)
.14 Benjiemouse XP Dell P3 700 Laptop
.15 Frankiemouse XP SonicBlue Tablet PC (400Mhz Transmeta)
.16 -> .49 reserved for future workstations
.50 -> .99 DHCP Pool
.100 Heart of Gold (reserved for new PowerEdge box)
.101 Heart of Gold (old) - I decided not to change the IP on the Compaq and will make this change when I move HoG to the newer machine.
.102 -> .199 Reserved for future windows servers
.200 Magrathea
.201 Bistromath
.202 -> .254 Reserved for future unix/bsd servers
Have you noticed a naming convention?
Workstations: People from HHGTTG
Win Servers: Ships from HHGTTG
Nix Servers: Plaents from HHGTTG
Except Bistromath, which was a windows server then became my first FreeNAS server, it's where my wife keeps her backups and we have shared files (drivers, pictures and what not). She runs an at-home web design business - FYI. She's gotten attached to the name. That's ALL it was used for as a windows box and the overhead/time of keeping a 2003 box up for just that was ridiculous. FreeNAS setup took 20 minutes, no license stuff to worry about. Kicks ass!
Magrathea is actually replacing itself, the machine becoming HoG was called Frogstar7 and was a 2k3 machine. I was able to shuffle the drives between the PowerEdge boxes with ease. All of Frogstar7's content is stored on TB on my workstation until I get it running.
Pretty complicated, eh? And I do this shit for FUN! HA!
HoG also currently runs my Symantec AV server (deployment and management console) which I will be retiring. I'm moving my XP machines to OneCare so I can tell you all about that. I'll probably move the 2k machines to some Free License or Open Source (FLOS) AV solution, but I'd really like to find one that has a management console, works on both MS and Nix boxes so I can tie the management of antivirus (def and app updates) to a single location instead of managing them box to box.
Also, the two freenas and single m0n0wall boxes are all standalone currently, I think I might toy with Sun's Enterprise Management Suite (which they give away for frickin' FREE nowadays) to see if I can centralize user and access management from a single console. FreeNAS does have some support built into it for windows domain and active directory authentication. I'm hoping to get that squared away when I move HoG, if I can't get it working then I'll probably see what's involved in getting the Sun solution running.
Type at ya later!
No comments:
Post a Comment