Server Rack Tour 2021 - Epyc Rome and Ice Lake, OH MY!

it's been about a year and a half since i last went through every single component inside my home network and well a little bit has changed since then today i figured i would walk through my entire server rack tell you what's inside of it what i use it for and most importantly what potential upgrades i see myself making in the future the v765 from patriot viper is a mechanical keyboard with all the right specs whether you're a gamer content creator or just an office drone the aircraft grade aluminum backplate provides an incredibly rigid deck to support the kale white box switches ensuring everyone with an earshot will know you're better at typing than they are combine that with the ip56 dust and water resistance perky rgb lighting programmable hotkeys and custom macros you'll be sure to strike fear into whoever is on the other end of your headset get all the features you want without breaking the bank thanks to the patriot viper v765 gaming keyboard click the link down in the video description to learn more welcome back to craft computing everyone as always i'm jeff it was may of 2020 the last year i walked through every single part inside my server rack and i figured it was about time for an update because pretty much every single component in there has changed every single one of my servers almost every single one of my switches my router my cable modem heck even my kvm console have all gone through significant upgrades not only that but you guys have been asking me for an update so i figured we would start at the top and work our way all the way to the bottom and see what's inside let's go ahead and uh open this thing up let's start off with one of the weirdest servers that i own in the sangoma freepbx phone system 60. and in fact i am using this for anything but a freepbx phone system in fact this is hosting my guacamole server which i use for my kvm console as well as remote access for vnc or remote desktop for all of the other servers in my rack inside this box is an intel j1900 quad-core processor eight gigabytes of ddr2 memory and two 128 gigabyte ssds now obviously this box was meant to be used as a small business phone server but inside of it is just standard x86 hardware so installing ubuntu mate as well as the guacamole service was pretty straightforward if you want more information about how i did this i will have links to everything down in the video description up next on the list is my rs surfboard sb 8200 cable modem which is capable of 2 gigabit per second down and 250 megabit per second up but comcast being comcast they only allow me to have one gigabit down and 50 megabit up because what home user would need more than that now you might notice that my cable modem is in a 3d printed 1u enclosure complete with a keystone jack for pass through to my router and this is all thanks to my friend josh for 3d printing this out before i had access to a 3d printer and in fact this is pretty much the project that prompted me to go buy a 3d printer so i guess if it weren't for a lack of rack mountable cable modems i would never have cosplayed as corvo this halloween next up in the stack comes one of the most important items here in my server rack and that is the unifi dream machine pro from ubiquity it serves as my router as well as wi-fi controller and can also host a security camera nvr and act as an access control system if you have a fairly large and complex home network like i do or even run a small to medium sized business and use unifi products the udm pro is a fantastic device to use in conjunction with those other unifi products and therein lies the one key to my recommendation of this product it has eight one gigabit network ports with no power over ethernet two 10 gigabit network ports and a single three and a half inch hard drive mount what that means is that functionality while good is also fairly limited because there's no power over ethernet to the gigabit network ports you have to either add injectors or use a switch that has power over ethernet on board eight ports is also not nearly enough as you can see by the cabling that i have going on here and while having a hard drive cage available for the built-in nvr is a great feature it's also fairly limited because there's only one hard drive cage it limits your possible future expansion and also prohibits you from running a raid and while raid is not a backup it is uptime insurance and certainly something that i would want in my nvr system now that all the internet and internet out devices are out of the way we come to potentially my favorite device in the entire rack and that is my mikrotik crs 317 1g 16s plus now for those not familiar with mikrotik naming the g stands for gigabit ports and in this case there is one gigabit network port however the s plus stands for 10 gigabit sfp plus links and in this case there are 16 of them meaning that there are 16 10 gigabit network ports on this switch as a top of rack switch the crs 317 is absolutely dynamite especially at the asking price of 399 us dollars you can run all 16 ports at line rate meaning that you can saturate 10 gigabit up and down on all 16 ports at the same time without breaking the sweat that is as long as you stick to layer 2 functionality and that is the achilles heel for a lot of microtic devices in this price range while yes you can saturate this entire switch with 10 gigabit connectivity on every single port that breaks down significantly when you start working with layer 3 routing now as pretty much every single home network out there as well as most small businesses only need layer 2 functionality this is a fantastic deal at the given price point however when you start needing layer 3 routing capabilities i would push that off to another device two more switches and then we can move on to the really fun stuff up next is the unifi usw 24 poe plus and as the name implies it is a 24 port gigabit switch with poe functionality now you might notice this switch is powered off and there's kind of a good reason for that when i moved into this home almost two years ago i was planning on rolling out a completely self-hosted access control and smart home system however i have yet to find the right combination of devices to make that a reality while sure i can go down to lowe's home depot or walmart and pick up the latest in home automation systems i also want my home automation system to be hosted 100 within this rack without having to rely on a third-party cloud service while i rely on google services for pretty much every aspect of my life including uploading this video to youtube i also think that some things should be 100 self-hosted and when it comes to access to my front door garage door or even motion detectors and cameras i feel that something that i have enough power here to be able to do myself and unfortunately in the consumer space there aren't a lot of options for that right now so while i was going to use this switch entirely for access control and security cameras it sat dormant since i pulled it out of the box now some of you watching this video have already probably asked what is this little screen right here this is a 1u blank panel that i happen to cut a hole and fit in a temperature and humidity gauge so i can see the temperature and humidity at a glance from outside my rack now we'll get into this in just a little bit but there is an air conditioning unit at the bottom of my rack that forces cold air up the front this allows all of my servers to pull in cold air regardless of the ambient temperature in the garage now this screen allows me to see the current temperature in the front of my rack without having to log into prtg or other monitoring services that i have running and right now we are at 70.8 degrees fahrenheit and 43 humidity and finally to finish out the networking side of the equation we have my edge switch in the microtic crs 328 24p 4s plus rm this is a 24 port poe plus gigabit network switch with four 10 gigabit sfp plus ports on board like its bigger brother in the crs 317 it does struggle with layer 3 routing however the switch os that's on board is absolutely fantastic and has every feature that i could ever want up to and including small and medium sized businesses now while i'm not personally a fan of the web gui or command line interfaces on either of these switches they are fairly easy to pick up if you understand basic network terminology so they do take a little bit of getting used to but absolutely have my recommendation for installation in pretty much any use case except layer 3. up next is a bit of an odd device coming in at only two-thirds of a u in my kvm switcher for those who don't know what kvm means it stands for keyboard video and mouse what this device does is it takes vga and usb inputs and allows me to connect to every single server in my network stack you'll see my kvm console in just a moment but essentially this device allows me to connect a keyboard monitor and mouse to any server inside the rack and now for the part you've probably all been waiting for what about these servers inside my rack starting right up here at the top with the hp dl80 gen9 this is a dual xeon system with two e5 2660v3 cpus which each have 10 cores and 20 threads they have a base clock of 2.6 gigahertz and a max turbo of 3.3 this particular server is running 64 gigabytes of ddr4 ecc registered memory at 2133 as well as 12 seagate es2 constellation 3 terabyte sas drives now these drives have given me problems in the past and i don't necessarily recommend them for productivity however in a home lab environment which is how i'm running them right now they are a fantastic value at about twenty dollars a piece as a home lab server it allows me to experiment with different operating systems as well as different drive configurations like i recently did for my iscsi steam library video or for zfs deduplication as far as the hp dl80 gen 9 goes it is a fantastic multi-purpose server especially for those on a budget it features 12 3.5 inch drive bays with support for both sas or sata disks for pci express low profile expansion slots and two full height expansion slots there's also two gigabit ethernet ports on board as well as hp ilo or integrated lights out for ipmi up next is a server that i honestly cannot wait to sink my teeth into and will be the first brand new server i have ever reviewed on this channel super micro sent me over a 2u ultra server featuring intel's all new 10 nanometer islik xeons as well as 512 gigabytes of ddr4 registered ecc memory running at 3200 yeah this thing is a beast it's also been a little over two years since i've last put my hands on a brand new server so uh i was getting a little itchy anyway look for that review coming up very shortly here on the channel and now's the part of the episode where things get a little bit more difficult to film with me on camera as i am six foot five and the majority of my server rack is not but we're gonna do our best here starting with the 1u hive zeus servers alright i found a chair so at least i'm slightly more comfortable now anyway up next are these three 1u hive zeus servers which i have covered fairly extensively on the channel these are fantastic first-time servers that you can pick up for about a hundred and ten dollars a piece for a bare bones kit or about 145 dollars with a full set of sliding rails which i absolutely would recommend if you plan on installing them into a server rack rails are one of those things that no one thinks they needs until you have them and then you can't possibly live without them almost every single one of my servers has a full set of sliding rails and they are absolutely worth their weight in gold being able to simply slide a server out upgrade all of the hardware inside of it and then slide it back in without having to take the server completely out of the rack or lug all that weight around honestly is worth any price point you want to put on them so even at 50 for most used server rails i would still recommend buying them now why are these hive zeus servers such a great deal well at 110 dollars you get a dual xeon motherboard full power supply all in a 1u form factor these are based on the 2011 v1 or v2 cpus meaning that any sandy bridge or ivy bridge xeon will plug right in and work just fine the bottom two servers each have a pair of intel xeon e5 2650 v2 cpus which have 8 cores and 16 threads with a base clock of 2.6 gigahertz and a max turbo of 3.4 now given these are based on the intel iv bridge architecture they are definitely not the fastest cpus on the block but given that these are also only forty dollars each that's a heck of a lot of compute in a one use space for less than two hundred dollars now the top server is just a little bit different it is running a pair of intel xeon e5 2667 v2s which were mainly met for workstation use they are still 8 cores and 16 threads but have a base clock of 3.3 gigahertz and a max turbo of 3.6 now this server was obviously set up to handle my most demanding virtual machines including acting as a remote video editing rig for about six months inside proxmox i hosted a windows 10 virtual machine with an nvidia quadro p1000 in passthrough this gave my video editor not only video rendering capabilities but also local access to any other device on my server rack including my file server which we edit videos directly off of now while i have personally moved on from these three hive zoo servers it's not like i don't recommend them anymore quite the contrary these are still an amazing deal at about 110 dollars for a bare bones kit or like i said 145 with the set of rack sliders in them they just happen to be some of the oldest servers that i have in my server rack and were kind of redundant seeing as how i have an epic 32 core and 64 core system just a couple of you below one server that i am still using on a daily basis is the hive cygnus server also known as the chenboro nr12000 in the 1u storage server and 1u storage server is usually a bit of a misnomer as 1u doesn't have a lot of room for three and a half inch drives the nr12000 though is one of the longest servers i have ever installed in a server rack and barely fits inside my apc net shelter 42u however it also holds 12 three and a half inch drives on board inside of this server are 12 three and a half inch he6 hd sata drives now it is important to note this server will only host sata drives and does not have a sas controller on board so keep that in mind when you're looking for drives to fill it up with the hype cygnus also doesn't have a lot of compute functionality on board only having an intel e3 1220 v2 cpu with 4 cores and 8 threads as well as 32 gigabytes of ddr3 non-registered ecc memory so while i wouldn't recommend the server as a be all end-all virtual machine server it does very well as a storage server in conjunction with some other compute boxes and then one of the more awkward angles that i'm going to have to film in today is my hp kvm console this is an hp 7600 17 inch monitor with a keyboard and mouse attached to it and in my opinion is pretty much invaluable to have inside of a server rack now some people may disagree with the need of having a kvm console in their rack but i personally find it very helpful both in troubleshooting and setting up new hardware even with ipmi or console access defense and finally we have come to the beating heart of my home network with my amd 32 core virtualization host and 100 terabyte file server now i know that's a lot of eggs to put into one basket but remember the nr12000 is backing up everything that is on my amd epic 32 core server but should you keep your backups in the same server rack as your primary server no you really shouldn't but thanks to my 50 megabit upload from comcast i really don't have any other options so what else is running on this server well first off all the hard drives that you see up here are running on a truenast virtual machine with 128 gigabytes of dedicated memory this also runs every other virtual machine that i rely on here around my house as well as for craft computing that includes pi hole prtg a vpn gateway flex as well as a remote video editing rig thanks to the tesla m60 in vgpu mode plex hardware encoding is also handled by the second gpu on that tesla m60 as well as an additional three gaming virtual machines for my daughter and her two friends that live next door and just below that is even more cpu and graphics power thanks to an amd epic roam 7742 64 core cpu and three titan x pascals this is my cloud gaming server and it's what i've been using to test all of my vdi and cloud gaming instances now recently you might have also seen i've been testing out iscsi and cfs duplication and that's all been in an effort to increase the storage performance in this particular box so hopefully that'll all be coming together in the next couple weeks and finally here we are at the bottom of the rack in the infrastructure section or what provides power and cooling to everything above starting with my apc smart 1500 va this is a 2u rackmount ups unit with 1500 va of battery life to it and as you can probably see from there it's pretty much running at capacity with the servers that i have on right now at about 97 or in layman's terms about 970 watts at idle now obviously this is something that i need to upgrade in the very near future as 970 watts will only run for about three minutes on this particular ups unit but to upgrade i would either need to get a second eps unit and run off a second circuit on my wall which i do have available or i would need to jump up to 240 volt and that is more likely what i'm going to do here in the next year now this particular apc unit also has the environmental sensors on board which essentially has two temperature probes that i can set inside my server rack one for the ambient temperature outside and one for the temperature at the front of the rack all that data gets recorded in prtg which i'm running in a virtual machine on the server that's right up here and don't worry i am working on a full tutorial on how to track all of the metrics inside of your server rack using prtg so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that one and last but not least is the air conditioner at the bottom of my server rack in the trip lite sr cool 7k rm this is a 7000 btu unit that takes up 8 u of rack space however i really couldn't host the server rack out in my garage without it this unit runs about 8 months out of the year and has been an absolute game changer for running a full stack of servers it provides a 17 degree delta between the ambient temperature in my garage and the air that the servers actually blow through the chassis to keep them cool what that means is even if it hits 95 degrees fahrenheit in my garage my server rack is sitting at a nice cool 80 degrees which is more than adequate for me now all of that hot air has to go somewhere and it is handled by this blower mounted to my ceiling this is an 85 watt blower which is capable of something like 185 cubic feet per minute more than adequate to take the exhaust from the air conditioner and vent it out the back of the house meaning that the air conditioner is not just reheating the air inside my garage and that's what i run inside my server rack here in november of 2021 and i hope that answers pretty much all of your questions if you do have any more for me leave them down in the comments and i may make a future video to expand on some of the things that i run inside of here i've also got links to pretty much all of the hardware down in the video description as well as links to key videos and tutorials that i featured inside the server rack but that's going to do for me in today's video make sure to hit that thumbs up button if you like this video and subscribe to craft computing if you haven't done so already follow me on twitter at craft computing to keep up with daily shenanigans like this and if you like the content you see on this channel and want to help support me and what i do head on over to craftycomputing.store and pick yourself up a pint glass or subscribe to my patreon link is also down in the video description as a bonus you'll get exclusive access to my discord server where you can chat with myself and the other hosts from talking heads thank you all so much for watching this one and as always i will see you in the next video cheers guys [Music] today's beer is actually fairly local to me over in newport oregon this is the rogue ales and spirits dead and dead it is their traditional dead guy ale aged in dead guy whiskey barrel chips and is a seasonal release that is always fantastic dead and dead complements the flavor profile of our classic dead guy ale with oak vanilla and fruit notes from the oak of dead guy whiskey barrel chips 9.5 percent and 40 ibu you know what's really fun about reviewing beer in every single video that i do that technically makes me a professional beer critic the head on this one is a lot of large and loosely packed bubbles and is actually not dissipating all that quickly which is a little unique for a beer with this type of head on it it's got that deep rich amber red color that's a good looking beer ah oh that is so good that is the perfect blend of an irish red with northwest tops and just a little bit of sweetness and oak from the barrel aging ah that is just fantastic it starts off with this very tangy and vibrant citrusy flavor like oranges and lemon and then very gracefully slides into this really warm rich malty flavor with a little bit of vanilla a little bit of wood oak char that's just a darn good beer in fact this is hosting my guacamole server [Music] guacamole guacamole the hell in fact this is actually hosting my guacamole server i don't think i've ever said guacamole twice in my life [Music] but there it is in fact this is hosting my guacamole server guacamole guacamole [Music]

Channel: Craft Computing

Views: 110,056

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Id: ICQfhHmH_9c

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2021