A new article series: The STH Datacenter Lab

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Patrick

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Recently, I did some rough math and decided that instead of spending (a lot of) money with AWS, Rackspace or others, it was worthwhile to just get a second colo facility. I frankly want a more redundant solution than is in place now.

One of the other considerations is that I want something local-ish so the new facility will be in the bay area, California, about a 25 min drive from home. I realized most server hardware review sites do not run infrastructure in datacenters, so it is time to change that trend. We will now be able to put hardware into a datacenter during reviews.

Unlike last time where we went to Las Vegas, snapped a few pics, did a bit of configuration and everything was ready to go, we are doing everything this time.

Planning out the series on this:
Part 1: The decision to expand colocation
Part 2: Picking where for the second site
Part 2: Networking and Security (may not be 100% detailed on everything we are doing)
Part 3: Servers and Storage
Part 4: The new environment (still testing KVM v. Proxmox v. Docker v. ?)
Part 5: Linking sites for redundancy
Part 6: Performance findings
Part 7: Tracking everything
Part 8: The new STH datacenter lab
Part 9: Monitoring

Anything I missed? Other topics?

On part 4, I am really struggling. I am fairly certain the answer is NOT Hyper-V. But what exactly it will be in the next generation I am not positive.

Also if anyone is looking for a dedicated server (or a few) at a good price let me know. I may start selling off some spare capacity in both datacenters since it would be really nice to do something with the capacity. This is going to be done more on a "let me know what you need and I can see what I can do" basis. Xeon D, C2750, E5's, nice SSDs, you name it we have access to now.
 
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T_Minus

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While you're going through your stuff... Here's some items I'm on the lookout for:
  • 1+ 800Gb S3700 with <1PB written.
  • 1 Samsung 960gb PM853T to compliment my other.
  • 1 800gb S3500 with little usage to compliment my other.
  • E5 v2 CPUs (higher clocked preferred to higher core count w/lower clock)
  • DDR3 8gb RDIMM
  • DDR3 16gb RDIMM
  • WD RE or RE4 2TB, 3TB, 4TB drives with limited usage. (IE: Not used/abused)
  • CHEAP 1366 1U or 2U w/hot swap complete systems. Can also be 1356 if 100% complete. Complete could be missing: HD. (Would prefer RAM even if it's only 2, 4 or 8gb.). 3Gb/s backplane "OK".
 

Patrick

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While you're going through your stuff... Here's some items I'm on the lookout for:
  • 1+ 800Gb S3700 with <1PB written.
  • 1 Samsung 960gb PM853T to compliment my other.
  • 1 800gb S3500 with little usage to compliment my other.
  • E5 v2 CPUs (higher clocked preferred to higher core count w/lower clock)
  • DDR3 8gb RDIMM
  • DDR3 16gb RDIMM
  • WD RE or RE4 2TB, 3TB, 4TB drives with limited usage. (IE: Not used/abused)
  • CHEAP 1366 1U or 2U w/hot swap complete systems. Can also be 1356 if 100% complete. Complete could be missing: HD. (Would prefer RAM even if it's only 2, 4 or 8gb.). 3Gb/s backplane "OK".
You should try these: Supermicro X8DTU 1U Server CSE113 w 2X Quad Core Xeon E5620 2 4GHz | eBay pretty awesome IMO but you would need to add RAM (dirt cheap with 4GB modules) and you might want a cheap m1015 or similar to get 6gbps SATA or SAS.

I was thinking of buying one just for the chassis which sells for more than 2x that price.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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You should try these: Supermicro X8DTU 1U Server CSE113 w 2X Quad Core Xeon E5620 2 4GHz | eBay pretty awesome IMO but you would need to add RAM (dirt cheap with 4GB modules) and you might want a cheap m1015 or similar to get 6gbps SATA or SAS.

I was thinking of buying one just for the chassis which sells for more than 2x that price.
Wow, more hot swaps than the 1Us I just got from the DEAL section!

$16 for 4GB RDIMM can't pass that up, got 48gb coming for my other chassis.

That's a deal for a 8 bay hot swap, tempting but not sure what I'd use another entire system for with 10+ ready to go into service, I'm just need mostly parts now I think...
 
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Jeggs101

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I am hard pressed to say that isn't a great deal.

Why not make the series so colo is accessible to more people?
 

Patrick

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If only I could find 8GB ECC UDIMMs for $30! Huge premium on the PC3L-12800 ECC UDIMMs at the moment.
 

Patrick

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@Patrick not factor in any insurance costs (general/liability) for hardware being colocated ? Some colos require insurance too.
Relatively inexpensive apparently. A few hundred a year in my case for that plus property. In fact, a lot of insurance in the US when I was getting quotes would do $10,000 coverage on servers for $25-50/ year if you had business insurance.

Oh and @eva2000 hoping by Friday I will have the colo in a good enough shape that if you need cores/ storage/ RAM/ bandwidth I can help.
 
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Yarik Dot

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It would be nice if Part 2: Networking and Security (may not be 100% detailed on everything we are doing) includes IPv6 implementation including IP range segmentation.
 
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Patrick

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It would be nice if Part 2: Networking and Security (may not be 100% detailed on everything we are doing) includes IPv6 implementation including IP range segmentation.
Great idea. IPv6 I was planning to address in another piece including a how to.