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Let's See Those Toolboxes & Workbenches!

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leapinlew:

--- Quote from: Paul Olson on May 30, 2012, 09:28:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: kahlid74 on May 29, 2012, 02:47:24 pm ---
--- Quote from: Unstupid on May 15, 2012, 11:50:41 am ---
--- Quote from: kahlid74 on May 14, 2012, 10:28:01 am ---And the obligatory server rack and networking equipment shot:


--- End quote ---

I see a lot of networking equipment but not a lot of networking cables... What's that about?

--- End quote ---

The stuff in the white rack runs the house and all cords are neatly orchestrated in the back.  The two 6509 chassis's and rack of equip to the right are for test labs only.  They are for either practicing my certs or hammering out something that doesn't make sense in the real world, usually design conundrums.

--- End quote ---

Just curious:
I understand having the racks to test stuff with, but what do you actually use all of that for in the house? I have one little linksys router, and it does pretty good at keeping up with 6 computers, 2 360s, and 2 phones. What am I missing. I wondered this when I was taking my networking classes too, but since we were mostly learning software, I haven't even used all of that rack equipment.

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I have a rack in my office and it has:

Media center PC
Switch
wireless router
Phone
Blu Ray
Cable box
Receiver
Speaker selector
Alarm system
NAS storage devices to stream media

There are plenty of other things I would like to add too. Doesn't take long to fill up a rack.

wp34:

--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on May 25, 2012, 08:58:16 pm ---From an older thread of mine on the subject ...

Only difference now is a little more clutter and some new gear and reference material (include the Randy Fromm videos) on an iPad:



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+1

You can't beat an iPad for reference materials in the shop.  Your collection looks a little better than mine though. 

DirtyDachshunds:
My contribution.  Newly finished too!

kahlid74:

--- Quote from: mcseforsale on May 30, 2012, 12:58:35 pm ---Nice kit.  CCIE?
AJ

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Nah, CCNP.  Not really sure if I want to complete the CCIE.  So much work, so specialized and kind of a dead end road.  Being a Data Center Architect I push to be more well rounded, so Cisco/Juniper/Microsoft/VMware/Linux/Security/Citrix certs overall.  I like to hold certs in the advanced area but not the expert area.  Gives me time to touch more technology and explore different ideas.


--- Quote from: Paul Olson on May 30, 2012, 09:28:32 pm ---Just curious:
I understand having the racks to test stuff with, but what do you actually use all of that for in the house? I have one little linksys router, and it does pretty good at keeping up with 6 computers, 2 360s, and 2 phones. What am I missing. I wondered this when I was taking my networking classes too, but since we were mostly learning software, I haven't even used all of that rack equipment.

--- End quote ---

So the stuff in the white rack comprises what runs the house.  In it is a Cisco 4507R-E which runs my network.  Linksys routers like you mentioned work great but their hardware is very low grade/low engineered.  So 1 Gbe on a Linksys $50 dollar router != 1Gbe on the 4507R-E.  There's a bell curve on how Network flow works and on lower end gear buffers and memory often times limit the rate of transfer.  So for me, I need pure 1 Gbe all the time, never limited by how much I'm transferring.  This is because of what else runs on the 4500.

The servers at the bottom of the rack are HP DL385's running dual 6 core AMD chips and 64 GB of ram.  They each have anywhere between 20-50 VM's running at a given time.  These VM's can vary based on what I've got going in my head at any given time.  Sometimes I'm building an armada of tiny Linux boxes to see how I can affect NetFlow or to see if I can DDoS something on a low scale.  Sometimes I'm running 24 GB VM DB boxes so I can gauge what real world environments look like. 

Outside of testing/projects I run three AD domains each with two DCs.  My root Domain and then a home domain and a lab domain.  The Home domain runs VM's for thin clients around the house as well as any services around the house.  Stuff like MS SharePoint with workspaces for myself, the wife and friends.  I also run stuff like iFolder, an awesome program that is basically DropBox only you can run it on your own server.  Dropbox's limited space got me pissed.

I've got three SANs totaling 20 TB of space.  This space holds all Arcade related stuff, my MP3 collection, Games collection, Work stuff and Movies/TV shows.  When our son was born I wanted to give myself and my wife the ability to instantly run any cartoon on any TV in the house.  So she can go to the TV in the Kitchen and click it on and boom, there's every episode of sesame street ever.  Or Dora the explorer or whatever.  So that was kind of my inspiration for some of the build out.

So by no means do I need half the stuff I have but I've enjoyed living in the IT world so far in my life and my passion for it outside of work has reflected back into my work and it's visibility only helps to bring about new challenges and exciting paths forward in my career.

yaksplat:

--- Quote from: kahlid74 on June 01, 2012, 09:14:55 am ---When our son was born I wanted to give myself and my wife the ability to instantly run any cartoon on any TV in the house.  So she can go to the TV in the Kitchen and click it on and boom, there's every episode of sesame street ever. 

--- End quote ---

The same exact inspiration behind my 14TB media server.  It's nice now that they can pick their own cartoons.  I have no problem with them watching cartoons, as long as they're good ones.  Transformers, GI Joe, Phineas & Ferb, all the disney classics, looney tunes....

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