The Rackmount and Servers Thread

[Per Hansson]

Re: My Rackmount

The more intelligent UPSs should have a software command that can do it.

This UPS had but it did not help... Because the error is _in_ the microcontroller... And the microcontroller will never let you use the UPS longer than it thinks the batteries will last, to prevent deep discharging them which is not good at all...

Only way around it is to do as I described... It is in APC's knowledgebase somewhere...

[dood]

Re: My Rackmount

Okay... not to hijack willawake's post... but I figured I'd post our racks here at the school. We are a Vocational high school with around 200 machines total.

The servers are powered by two 1500va APC Smart-UPS 2u rackmounts, and the other side of the rack (switches and 1 server) are powered by a APC Smart-UPS 2200va w/ a battery add-on that I believe doubles that to 4400... and the load meter is on one bar




(our one (so far) pre-built server. It's been working out well, so we may get another)


We have two of these 8 port KVMs that are supposed to daisy-chain, but they've never worked right that way. Work great otherwise. We're replacing the two with a single 16 port.


The core switches. That one iPrism box has been converted into a web-accessable MP3 jukebox for our office tunes... we were bored one day . BTW_ the main switch has all gigabit ports for the uplinks from the other switches and to the servers.


The big-ass, old, HEAVY APC UPS!

[willawake]

Re: My Rackmount

hey dont worry about hijacking my post....everybody post server pr0n!..drool

looks GREAT!

what do the servers run and what do they do?
what is the little black box above the router?
what is the blue 1u box at the bottom of the server rack? firewall?
isnt the iPrism a little expensive to be using as an mp3 server, or is it old?

nice procurve switches, lifetime guarantee....

i do have to comment that it is a little crazy to put an APC 2U at the top of the rack though. make sure you take the faceplate off before you take the unit out, those things have a habit of coming off when someone is holding it wrong. damn heavy dangerous things.

[dood]

Re: My Rackmount

Okay, let me try to answer these questions. I'm not overly familiar with the servers, as they were in place when I started working here, and I'm just an assistant, so I don't get to play with them much. But I'll give this my best shot...

From top to bottom, on the left side, we have the following-

APC Smart-UPS 1500va
K12 internet filter box (dual PIII 1ghz or something like that), runs something of their own OS, web managed
Gateway prebuilt box, runs the exchange mailserver, I believe
The next four 4u servers I don't know of from here (I'm at home now), but I'll check tomorrow for sure. I can't read the labels from the pics I took
The 3u above the KVM is incognito, one of our camera servers
KVM
2nd UPS
Our biggest fileserver, stores all our applications and common shares, plus our private administrative shares
Empty spot is reserved for our home directory server... all the users home dirs live there... it's been having reliability problems, so its sitting on the bench
Second camera server, conspiracy
Bottom blue 1u box is another iPrism box... this one runs our VPN server

Story behind the two iPrism's is this... We used to have a maintenance agreement with them as our content filter. The iPrism we use as our jukebox has been totally stripped of its orignal guts. They had sent us a new box under the agreement, and didn't want the old one back. It was a proprietary mobo running a 4gb microdrive as storage. We stripped it, dropped a microATX board in with a celeron 600, and it's running Server 2003. Now, for the VPN server. That was our new iPrism that they sent us under the agreement, which we used until we decided to go to a k12usa system. When we cancelled the agreement with St. Bernard, they said they didn't want the box back, so we found it was good enough to run server '03 itself, loaded it up, and the rest is history

I'll get the answers to the rest of your questions tomorrow, when I can get model numbers, and read the nametags on the servers :p

[willawake]

Re: My Rackmount

thanks. you should know what all that stuff is and its function even though you are an assistant. better start asking questions tomorrow. there is potential to learn a lot from the admins.

nice for them to leave the iprisms behind. i guess the hardware is paid for after the first months of service.

whats the box on top of the apc also.

[dood]

Re: My Rackmount

I have a document on my palm that tells me what all the servers do and what spots they are on the KVMs, but I have to look at the names on the fronts of the servers to know for sure... The system admin is my brother, and he's going to be on vacation tomorrow and wednesday, so I'm on my own.

For the iPrisms... we paid a lot of money for that maintenance agreement, and the only thing we got from it was the new server...

The box on top of the big APC UPS is our DSL modem. We run a single T-1 dedicated to the servers, but all of the workstations in the building run off of the commercial DSL at 3mbps (at about a tenth of the cost of the T-1). It's been working out quite well.

[willawake]

Re: My Rackmount

The system admin is my brother

excellent. my sister is a lawyer which is not very useful when i have a linux question.

he's going to be on vacation tomorrow and wednesday, so I'm on my own.

i know the feeling. good luck i am sure it will be fine.

[dood]

Re: My Rackmount

Oh, I'm sure it'll be fine... He's been on vacation for a week at a time in the past. We've got it running so that nothing really ever goes wrong, unless it's some sort of catostrophic hardware failure... knock on wood...

The biggest thing I have planned for tomorrow is unlocking two kid's accounts at the end of the day (they've been bad ).

I'm looking for a different job, though... this one is only part-time and I need to get out somewhere where I'm being challenged and actually putting new knowledge to use on a daily basis, instead of just reading it on the internet. That's why I decided to get into recapping... something different...

[dood]

Re: My Rackmount

Here's a page detailing what's in the jukebox and what went into making suitable for its duities....

http://www.king-nerd.com/dood/1userver.htm

[Per Hansson]

Re: My Rackmount

Alright, this is my "server room" a small room in my basement

From bottom left to right:
Riello 6kW UPS
Compaq Proliant 3000 Dual PPro 333mhz 1,5GB RAM 10 SCSI harddrives, running Novell Netware. It is not on because it draws 280w continous which gets too expensive... Internal pics of it's PSU.
AST Advantage 623 P133 128MB RAM, monitoring the UPS, running Win2K Server... Has almost one year uptime. Internal pics of it's PSU.
Compaq Proliant 800 Server, Dual PPro 200Mhz Procs, 196MB RAM, acting as my firewall, had some nice uptime untill I brought it down to add a nic... Same as next machine....
Compaq Proliant 800 Server, Single PPro 200Mhz, 64MB RAM. Running Fedora Core 4. Only used for development. Tunred off when not in use. Internal pics of it's PSU.

The Switch is a D-Link DES 1024 A1, my trusty old workhorse... Internal pics of it's PSU. Ontop of it to the left is a Zyxel Prestige 660H Triple play ADSL Modem connected at 8mbps. Next to it is probably the most reliable hardware I own, a US Robotics Courier V Everything modem upgraded to V90 standard, the best one there is!

Not seen in the pic behind the keyboard is a Emine ME401 KVM switch, the worst pice of shit I have ever used, it always "hangs" when I reboot/turn off a server and not have it selected for view... I guess it does not like my nice servers... The monitor is of unknown brand and is equally shitty as the KVM switch; though I do not mind that

[willawake]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

looks great. thats quite a mix of os you have there. where is the zywall installed?

[Per Hansson]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

The Zywall is not in use, it is broken, the port forwarding feature does not work, it never forwards... Tried upgrading the firmware but that did not fix it... Funny issue heh...

But it's really secure aleast

[willawake]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

aw shame....did it never work?

you can get some good zywall advice here
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/zyxel

[Per Hansson]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

It came from a place a friend to me setup the network for; they had no need for portforwarding in the beginning so the issue was never found... But a couple years later when they needed it it did not work...

[willawake]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

lol i came back today to find a contractor fixing an aircondition unit by using a blowtorch to solder......and one of my lan cable channels was catching fire





whats in there? well only management and accounting. cables were ok though - otherwise it would have been a fun weekend

no donut for contractor

[willawake]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

new dl380 g5
http://www.iwans.net/proliant/

*wants
they have apparently fixed the fan noise problem with the G5 series
dunno about the longevity of these sff sas hdd though......
looks like they go with fujitsu caps not oscons this time...

same site xs4all datacenter
http://www.iwans.net/xs4all/

[willawake]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

woah...two webservers in 1u



supermicro 1u twin system

[stretch0069]

Re: My Rackmount

hey dont worry about hijacking my post....everybody post server pr0n!..drool

wish i could post some pics. its a no-no where i work. while some of its old stuff, there is some pretty cool new stuff coming in.


not to make anyone sad, but you should see the rackmount stuff that ends up in the local landfill.

[Spacedye69]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

Landfills are NO NO! Recycle. Have them send it to me.

[stretch0069]

Re: The Rackmount and Servers Thread

i would but you would not believe the bullshit we have to go through to remove the items from inventory so that they can be sold to the public. Its actually easier and faster just to dump the stuff at the landfill. I don't know if it gets recycled or covered with dirt. I'd go to the landfill and grab the stuff, but being a gov't employee, I would get into trouble. Anyone in the Northern Virginia area????? We have a bunch of stuff that will be heading out in the next couple months.