Your home server & Network

[christophe52]

yeah iv had a Cisco switch and a couple of access points that have come of the bay and had no trouble at all

 

[J.B]

I would also like to know this. I keep meaning to go for my CCNA and could do with some experience.

To be honest, you could probably do most of a CCNA without ever touching the hardware. Obviously its not as good doing it all on a simulator but it can be done!

 

[christophe52]

i dont find it as good as the real thing the real cisco gear can be unpredictable

 

[hamesy]

To be honest, you could probably do most of a CCNA without ever touching the hardware. Obviously its not as good doing it all on a simulator but it can be done!

I've got a few simulator's but it doesn't feel the same as using the equipment.

I've managed to bag two routers, but whether they work is a different story.

 

[TrX]

Ah, I constantly forget that not everybody has a CCO login to download anything they choose (literally anything - it's tied to a service provider support account)

Know that great, great feeling ;P

 

[christophe52]

Small update to my setup just added 4x 80gig drives and looking at building a second machine for more playing

 

[christophe52]

Thread seems to have been dead for a while any update people??????

 

[dave-lew99]

Well we are in a recession....

Personally i've decomissioned all my servers apart from a Solaris fileserver and switching wise i only have a WRT54G router and a Linksys unmanaged gigabit switch - that's my whole network these days.

Saving a small fortune on the electric bill...

 

[Misan]

Here's my current setup.

Home Network:

Firewall: ALIX 2C2 LX800 with 512MB CF card running Pfsense 1.2.3

Switch: Netgear Prosafe 24-Port Gigabit.

Patch Panel: 24-Port Cat6 panel

Primary DC & File Server: Custom built 2x Opteron 246, 4GB ECC Registered RAM, 4x750GB SATA 300 drives in a RAID 5, 2x250GB drives in a RAID 0, RocketRAID 1740. Running Server 2008 R2 Standard.

Secondary DC & Web Server: HP USDT D530 running Server 2008 Standard (64-bit)

Email Server: HP D530 Desktop running Server 2003 Standard (32-bit) & Exchange 2003

Imaging Server: Dell Poweredge T105 running Ubuntu 10.04 & FOG

Cisco Lab:
4 x Cisco 2600 Series routers
2 x Cisco 2950 Switches
1 x Cisco 850 ADSL Router

I've also installed network sockets for each room, and theres a Cisco 1200 AP on the top floor of the house, with a Netgear WG102 covering the bottom of the house.

Here's some pictures..

"Server Room"

Comms Cabinet

File Server & 2 HP boxes

Close up of the hot plug drive cages for the file server..

 

[PhillyDee]

Misan, I have that exact same Netgear Switch. Works spot on.
My network now includes an additional 10/100 switch as I cannot run any more cables under the floors. Plus an HP Jet Direct Printserver and VOIP router (with routing switched off).
And an APC UPS (400VA (ish?)) to power down / clean the server input. My Icydocks are no more! I have a rackmount case in there instead. Had to save some space.

 

[ThorpedoUK]

Dont mind at all!

The 1760 is my boundry router, the 2nd one is for CCNP purposes. The 3Com 4900 L3 is my core router which takes care of inter-VLAN routing etc. This is outgoing and is soon to be replaced full-time by the 4908G-L3 which is a far superior switch in every way apart from port numbers, but thats a bit irrelevant really . The Foundry I bought to increase my exposure to non-Cisco switching but also scratched my itch to move all the way to a full gigabit LAN. This replaces my 3548XL as my 'production' client switching, leaving it free for CCNP purposes. The aironet on top does the obvious.

The bottom 4U box is my NAS - currently only 2.2Tb but set for expansion. Then you can see an old DL360 which has my VMware "production" environment on it, my Domain Controller etc etc. The DL360G4 above it is currently not in use but will be as soon as some parts show up. I have two 146Gb 15k SCSI disks waiting to go in it and that will have vSphere 4 Enterprise on it and take over from the old DL360 which will be retired to be a Linux development environment (although still on VMWare ESX).

Above that there is a Dell PE2650 which I have graciously allowed to live in my rack, it belongs to my housemate and he is using it to host his virtual servers (DC, Exchange etc). There is also his 2948G-L3 switch for cisco learning purposes too.

I suppose a direct answer to your question is "not much, really"

EDIT: The 'old' photo shows two extra bits of kit, a dual quad-core server and a FC SAN. Sadly not mine

Excellent setup mate, very cool, I expect you noticed a slight increase in your electricity bill with all that running

My DL380 G4 that I recently sold would take about 460Watts running vSphere 4 (3xCentOS 5.5 WebServers recording global earthquake activity - don't ask, I was using the data to learn LAMP lol), likewise a quad core tower system with an ATI 5870 and 8GB ram running 3 x CentOS 5.5 web servers under VMware would take 160..... so the DL380 went, going to build a 6 core system soon from OcUK and have that as my XenServer host, Xeon's are overrated for what I need the power for (MySQL etc)

 

[m4rkw7]

Not as impressive as some of these, but it's ample for my needs atm.

From:

To:

Two computers.

Top:
VPN, RDP, Torrent, CCTV + other server.

Bottom:
FreeNAS File server

+ Essential networking gear.

 

[DRZ]

Blast from the past!

NAS has been upgraded but due to moving house and power consumption related issues, most of the cisco stuff has gone. Had a 2811 in there for a short time but that too has been retired for the time being.

I'll get back to full capacity at some point in the not too distant future though.

 

[ethos]

You guys certainly have some money to burn with electricity bills eh?

 

[ThorpedoUK]

Blast from the past!

NAS has been upgraded but due to moving house and power consumption related issues, most of the cisco stuff has gone. Had a 2811 in there for a short time but that too has been retired for the time being.

I'll get back to full capacity at some point in the not too distant future though.

Hey DRZ, you said you had a CISCO lab, was this for anything specific such as CCNA // CCNP??

I am looking at doing this soon (self study) and going for 1x2950 1x3550 (for L3 and CCNP possibly if I get past the CCNA), 3x2611/20XM's (for 12.4 and SDM), any ideas on kind of power that will draw?

All of this will come from the bay, seems pretty good for the Cisco kit....

Cheers man

 

[DJMK4]

Having abit of a move around at home with new bedroom furniture so will post pictures of my new server/networking setup soon

 

[DRZ]

Hey DRZ, you said you had a CISCO lab, was this for anything specific such as CCNA // CCNP??

I am looking at doing this soon (self study) and going for 1x2950 1x3550 (for L3 and CCNP possibly if I get past the CCNA), 3x2611/20XM's (for 12.4 and SDM), any ideas on kind of power that will draw?

All of this will come from the bay, seems pretty good for the Cisco kit....

Cheers man

I didnt build it for anything in particular really, just to play around with really. In terms of power, if you have all of it on constantly it'll be about the same as a home PC ish. More if you have it doing stuff so that there is significant CPU load, of course.

I seem to remember the full networking setup I originally posted used something like 1.2-1.5kW constantly...

 

[SiriusB]

Server:

Intel Core i7 920 @ stock
6GB RAM
250GB OS HDD
3TB of storage across 3 1TB drives
SBS 2008

Networking:

Trusty Netgear DG834GT router [Sky BB]
HP ProCurve 1800-8G to connect server with router and other PCs
HP ProCurve 1400-8G to give me multiple ports in my room.

I run SBS since it is the OS I deal with mostly with clients. Nice to have a test bed before I break a client's domain! Having a server OS at all is a little overkill for my needs at home, but it is a nice to have! I would also love to get a decent RAID controller and give the server some redundancy. But I can't justify the cost at the moment!

 

[ThorpedoUK]

I didnt build it for anything in particular really, just to play around with really. In terms of power, if you have all of it on constantly it'll be about the same as a home PC ish. More if you have it doing stuff so that there is significant CPU load, of course.

I seem to remember the full networking setup I originally posted used something like 1.2-1.5kW constantly...

Thats pretty awesome lab though! got a network diagram lying around? did you put together anything decent? (VLAN's etc)

I just done a bit of shopping as I'm building a CCNA // mess around with lab, got myself:

1. CISCO 877w (to replace the crappy BeBox I have, I hate that thing)
2. CISCO ASA 5505 firewall
3. 1xCISCO 2611XM

Skint now until pay day next week where I need to get a couple of switches or so (3550's??), any recommendations? I think the "new" CCNA cert is based on the 2960's now rather than the old 2950's, but they are like £200 a pop! looking at an 1841 too and maybe an aironet 1131AG. Thought I'd get rid of the consumer rubbish! it will also be used as a monitoring // snmp // nagios lab for work and VPN.

At the moment I have the crappy BeBox linked into the 2611XM on fe0/0 on a seperate subnet to the second interface fe0/1 which is my LAN, this includes the Ryan HD Mini which goes through an old 3COM Superstacker and a Netgear 1Gbps switch on its way to a vmware server upstairs streaming mp4's and a couple of Linux servers, seems to work well enough though once the 877W arrives and the ASA I will get rid of the BeBox and allow everything in to the firewall via the 877w.

Should be cool!

No idea what I'm doing yet though, need to get on Visio and read the CCENT/CCNA ICND1 book I got today!

Do you guys think the CCNA // CCNP is worth much these days?

 

[DustyMiller]

My home server is a E6750, with 8Gb Ram, two Raid1 packs with 250Gb & 750Gb drives, with an Adaptec HostRaid card on PCI-E x4 slot. running Server 2008 & Exchange 2007, and Hyper-V with another Serve 2008 for AV & other stuff.