Why I bought another server (I’ve just sold my DELL PowerEdge R210 a few months ago)? Well, it’s much slower than the DELL was and I bought to be our new firewall. The DELL was simply too expensive to use it for that job

I will install Endian, an extended version of IPCop onto this machine (I will name it “Tortuga”). The two onboard NICs will be used for “red1″ and “red2″. “red” is the interface name for external connection to IPCops (and Endians as it seems). Vodafone has just upgraded my DSL line from 6M to 16M and Telekom will switch me from “T-Home Entertain” to a regular 16M line, which will give me additional 2M of speed which was wasted for two years on not used IPTV.

The other the NIC ports will be used for the “green” network (regular LAN) and an “orange” one (DMZ). Endian allows me to route the traffic through both lines, so for example I will use Vodafone for Port 80, because of their much better routing to my webserver.

If you’re wondering – yes – I’ve returned the Linksys/Cisco RV042 router. It was simply not what I had in mind. For the money I’ve got back, I bought 2x 32GB OCZ SSDs for the Mac Minis which was a GREAT idea, they are now flying instead of playing the network-snails. I can highly recommend to install SSDs into Mac Minis. 32GB is not much, but as ALL stuff is stored on my Onnto DataTale-boxes, I’m fine with that.

Luckily, I’ve got the server with rails, so it will fit into my rack in the basement.

Speaking of the basement. It’s a bit messy inside (again) and I will use the weekend to clean it up and will also redo the cables behind the rack. Because I like it organized, I’ve got 5x 1U accessories for the rack – one blend with a whole, so I can route the cables through it and 4x blends I will use to give the cable mess a structure.

Hopefully I will receive the additional ordered patchcables by Saturday to start doing the overhaul. Believe it or not – the shop really had magenta cables Perfect for my Telekom DSL line!

With moving along to a new (transparent) proxy, content filtering, DNS & a great DHCP with binding MACs to IPs, I’m also changing the subnet of the LAN to 255.255.0.0.

I’m thinking of using the ranges like that:
10.0.0.x = Network devices & Servers (Firewall)
10.0.1.x = DMZ (just one Mac Mini there, no switch needed – yet, rest via VMs)
10.0.33.x = Clients
10.0.35.x = Neighbor clients

A good reason to start using a proxy with content filtering is that our neighbors are using our network via WiFi and they’ve a kid of 6 years who will start using the internet sooner or later. I just want to give them a protection and honestly, I’m also not sad to not see spam, commercial banners etc. anymore.

More about that when I’m done with the overhauling. Yeah – expect photos

Here’s my “evil secret plan”:

You may ask: WHY?

That’s a good question. First of all, I must say that I like the hardware of the DELL server. It was fast, pretty cheap for a server of this class, BUT it contains one thing that bugged me: I had to run Windows Server or Linux or UNIX. That’s ALL not very compatible with our clients, which are (as you can see in the diagram) all Macs. While fighting with the server and testing out different things like VMware ESXi, Linux and again even OpenSolaris, I was everytime overwhelmed. Also, it took too much of my time that I urgently need for my company stuff (means: working for my clients instead configuring the LAN).

With these things in mind, I decided that the idea from Danny Choo (scroll down until you see the Mac Minis ) is the best, also for me. Simply getting 2 used Mac Minis, attaching some external storage and having fun with an easy OS.

No way would I want to create a “REAL” server with Mailserver, iCal-Server etc. on my own, but for making the sharing easy, I used Mac OS X Server 10.6 that I had laying around for the “Business” machine. The “private” machine is running on a regular Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.(4).

I’m still a bit shocked how well the machines are working. Even if the stuff is +1year old, they are behaving very well and are doing their jobs better than expected.

Of course, everything has to fit into the new rack. Here are some photos of how I’ve managed to get everything in. It’s a great rack and it was really fun to put the stuff into the rack. Yeah I know, it’s not really meant to sit in a 19″ rack, but that’s ok

I’m very sure you’d like to see more photos, so don’t hesitate and check my flickr photos: http://dkle.in/rackjuly

Ciao
Dennis 

More photos on flickr!

This rack is (in my mind) supersexy (for a rack ) and I couldn’t await to install my stuff inside. So I discovered for a not so short period of the day how the hell to put the rails from both DELL servers inside. In the end, I had to put the older PowerEdge 1650 onto the base and attach the rails for it to the very first unit. The reason? Well, the rails are a bit too long, so I could not connect the back ends of to the back supports. Putting it to the bottom allows the 1650 to gently slide above the end of the rack and with the width of the server, the rails are nice in place.

The R210 was more or less easier to install. I had to turn both ends by 180° (like it was mentioned in the instructions). It does not really fit to the front side, but it’s ok – and fits within the rack so that I’m able to close the glass door.

After putting the rack to the basement with help of my wife (isn’t it great to have such a flexible wife!? ), I put both servers inside and connected the R210 with the eSATA drive, 2x GBit network and of course power, keyboard & VGA display. The server starts as hoped

Here’s a screenshot of the server after booting up all 4 current VMs:

Both – R210 & Onnto DataTale are connected to my smaller APC UPS. I hope it can get VMware ESXi to work with it, so that it automatically shuts down/holds all VMs and shut itself down if there’s a power outage.

This is just the first step. All my 19″ equipment will move to the new rack over the next few weeks, but earlier (planned for Saturday), the old PowerEdge 1650 will be the host for Endian Firewall which allows me use both DSL lines the same time and split ports to the different lines. The reason is quit simply: If I want to send for example a 10MB file to a client, I don’t want that Exchange fills the complete 1MBit/s upstream of the main DSL line. This line is also used for surfing etc., the 2nd DSL line (Vodafone) with it’s static IP and non-disconnect should so this for me. Also, I don’t want to have speed issues in case a user access the OWA of Exchange.

As always: More to come, here!

Ciao
Dennis 

So, I saw me looking around for a stable replacement for this, especially because I gave this new AMD machine to my mother to run Win 7 on it, because her old AMD64 was really really End Of Live .

I found a very nice and relatively cheap server. First, I wanted to get a DELL PowerEdge T110. A tower based one. But then I though: Why not put it into your rack? You’ve one and also another 19″ DELL server (a PowerEdge 1650). So I my choice was, after some phone calls while staying for 2 days at the EuropaPark in Rust with the DELL team, a PowerEdge R210 19″ server. (Believe me, it was pure fun to sit in this monorail driving through the park and discussing with the nice sales guy from DELL about the best configuration for what I had in mind).

What I had in mind was a VMware ESXi server. Yeah, I know, I complained a lot about VMware Fusion on Mac, but VMware ESXi seems to be a very different story. Some of you may wonder how I want to manage that, now that I’ve no “PC” back here. Well, running a Win XP VM is easily done and I use one for my regular work in Office 2003 or Office 2007 (depends on the client), so I simply installed the VMware Sphere Client there and what should I say? It works fantastic (on my Mac Pro!). Yes, I moved the Mac Pro back to the office after overhauling the office last week, but that’s a complete different story (Photos are available here by the way).

I’m currently sitting here in front of my cool new GALANT desk, grin broadly like an idiot while running my Win XP SP3 VM on the left 22″ display, typing this and doing the main stuff on the 30″ in front of me while having chats, twitter and the new surveillance (AXIS) cam on the other 22″ on the right. I must say, I’d missed the two 22″ the last few weeks when I was working with the MacBook only. Can’t help myself – I’m simply addicted to screen real estate.

Anyway – to come back to the topic; Anyanka is the name of the VMware ESXi / DELL PowerEdge R210 server. Why? Well, I ran out of names, and yes, it’s chosen from a character of “Buffy – the vampire slayer”

The data of the server:
- DELL PowerEdge R210 Rack Case (up to 2x internal HDs) / 1U
- Intel Xeon X3450 Quad Core CPU (+ HT = 8 Cores – yey!)
- 8GB DDR3-ECC-Regged 1333MHz RAM (4x 2GB Modules / UDIMM (ugh!))
- 160GB SATA HD (which is disconnected until I need it – any day – or not…
- 16x DVD-ROM
- iDRAC6 Embedded BMC (not sure if I could/want to use it and how it works.. but… it’s there)
- NO OS (yes, there’s a license sticker on the top of the case, I just say “THANK YOU DELL ”)
- 250W Power Supply
- 2/4 Post Static Rack Rails

As you can see, it’s a very robust system. The next Xeon in the house which is clocked at the same speed as the Mac Pro CPU. It should have more than enough power to run my few VMs.

Enough the words for the moment, I know you all want to see photos (if you haven’t seen my flickr photos yet), so – here they are

As a design oriented person, I HAD TO order this great looking bezel for the front, I’m sure it will look awesome when it’s in the rack!

Memory & the powerful Intel Xeon X3450 CPU.

An overview above the components built in.

A very good idea, if you want to run a VMware ESXi, IPCop, Endian or a FreeNAS on this machine: the internal USB ports to attach a USB stick and install the OS onto it. I use a 8GB stick to run VMware ESXi on it.

You can see the FULL SET of photos here on flickr.

Maybe you’re wondering why I don’t post photos from the server inside the rack. That’s a not sooo funny story. When I said: Ok, I want to get a 19″ 1U server, I also ordered rails for my older DELL PowerEdge 1650 which will be reused as Endian or IPCop soon. I’ve received the rails and found out, that my rack is NOT for servers. I’ve never noticed that there are no support on the back of the rack, because until today, everything worked fine with the front supports only. Hmm.. so I went to eBay, looking for a small rack and I found one. 15U for only 180 Euros incl. shipping from Poland to here. I’m still waiting for a lifesign and I must admit, that’s this deal seems not to be the cleverest idea I’d ever had, since I paid with PayPal and for 1 week now, never have heard anything from that dealer. I’ve send meanwhile 3 eMails to them and never got a reply. When I don’t get the rack or ANY information, I’ll turn to eBay and cancel it :/

The other question that possibly will come up is: Where do I store my VMs?

That question is easily answered: I’m using one of my Onnto DataTales! Funny enough, this is one of the first servers supporting eSATA! After fiddling around for some hours, my friend Merlin had the idea to put the external RAID to RAID10 (well it’s RAID0+1), to get down to 2TB. The issue is, that the free version of VMware ESXi does NOT recognize HDs greater than 2TB in this version. When it was set to 2TB it worked.

Here’s a photo of the back ports of the R210 I like it!

So that’s it for today! Hope I can show you some more photos of the server built into the a new rack, soon!

Ciao
Dennis

PS. Before I forgot: DELL says the server consumes 107 Watts on Full Load, but only 37 Watts on idle. I’ll check that later and post my results.