I am in the process of moving and racking my home lab.
Right now I have a mix of equipment stacked on a workbench in my garage, a Dell c2100 with dual L5639's, HP DL120G7 with E3-1230, a full tower with SM X8DTI and dual L5639's and a recently added Dell R320 with E5-2407.
Honestly, in their current location, I have been connecting to them via USB wifi dongle while they do their thing. They are used primarily for learning and Folding At Home right now. They get turned off when outside temperatures stay above 80 because it isn't cool enough in the garage for them to run at full load above 80.
I'm moving this equipment into a rack in my new, much better climate controlled basement and I will probably add another server or two that currently resides in my office to the rack. Those office servers are loaded with my storage (Tiered Storage Spaces) and VMs for learning and I run Plex off one server which I also use as a workstation
Right now, the office servers are on a 1GB wired network with an unmanaged switch connected to a wifi router which is also where Internet access comes in via cable modem.
In the interest of education, what would be the best way to go on stacking this equipment in a rack? Be happy with wired GB Ethernet? 10GB cards and direct connections in the rack, 1GB out to clients? 40GB Infiniband in the rack via direct connect?
In the long run, I want to setup some VMs that are home mission critical that will be shared out to thin clients/dumb clients/RDP on the network but nothing too taxing. Those will probably be clustered with some sort of failover.
I'm waiting on a quote to pull cable from the basement through the house but (as I understand it) I can get Cat6 pulled and use it for 1GB or 10GB, right?
I want to maintain and expand centralized home file storage and backup. If I can get everything into one chassis in the rack, I can then back that up locally to another chassis and remotely.
I will probably also setup pfsense or some other firewall as I move forward.
Thoughts, opinions?
Right now I have a mix of equipment stacked on a workbench in my garage, a Dell c2100 with dual L5639's, HP DL120G7 with E3-1230, a full tower with SM X8DTI and dual L5639's and a recently added Dell R320 with E5-2407.
Honestly, in their current location, I have been connecting to them via USB wifi dongle while they do their thing. They are used primarily for learning and Folding At Home right now. They get turned off when outside temperatures stay above 80 because it isn't cool enough in the garage for them to run at full load above 80.
I'm moving this equipment into a rack in my new, much better climate controlled basement and I will probably add another server or two that currently resides in my office to the rack. Those office servers are loaded with my storage (Tiered Storage Spaces) and VMs for learning and I run Plex off one server which I also use as a workstation
Right now, the office servers are on a 1GB wired network with an unmanaged switch connected to a wifi router which is also where Internet access comes in via cable modem.
In the interest of education, what would be the best way to go on stacking this equipment in a rack? Be happy with wired GB Ethernet? 10GB cards and direct connections in the rack, 1GB out to clients? 40GB Infiniband in the rack via direct connect?
In the long run, I want to setup some VMs that are home mission critical that will be shared out to thin clients/dumb clients/RDP on the network but nothing too taxing. Those will probably be clustered with some sort of failover.
I'm waiting on a quote to pull cable from the basement through the house but (as I understand it) I can get Cat6 pulled and use it for 1GB or 10GB, right?
I want to maintain and expand centralized home file storage and backup. If I can get everything into one chassis in the rack, I can then back that up locally to another chassis and remotely.
I will probably also setup pfsense or some other firewall as I move forward.
Thoughts, opinions?
