The home lab journey continues. I was a “good enough” boy last year, so Santa dropped off a Unifi Aggregation Switch. This completes my back end “core” for my standard networking and NFS storage for my Proxmox servers.
I also updated the uplink to the Netgate 6100 to connect to the USW Aggregation at 10 GbE. (One day I will get around to upgrading my Internet link to over 1 Gb/s but based upon usage, that is low on priority list.
A hint of this was my previous post where I was totally confused as to which port was ix1. I always have the first port, ix0 in this case, as my LAN connection.
Here is the basic setup:
I picked up a brush panel as it is a nice way pass the DAC cables through. While I still have a couple of fibre connections between the switches, going forward DAC cables will be the way I will be proceeding unless I have some obscenely long run.
Anyway, here is what the rack looks like as of January 2025:
On a sad note, it looks like a capacitor on the Eaton 5PX 2200 has failed. Once the 5PX goes on battery the unit goes into battery failure, even though the battery is good. It seems to be a fairly “well known” issue, so I have to replace that. No good deal is ever that good, unfortunately.
About Mike Pelley
Let’s see… A little about me…
I’ve been around information technology since 1983 with computers such as DEC Rainbows (weird machine – the standard DOS couldn’t format its own floppy disks – remember them? – and I had to format them on a friend’s IBM PC) to Radio Shack TRS-80 to Apple ][e and Apple //c in the beginning.
I have programmed in 8-bit assembly language on 6502, FORTRAN and COBOL on IBM System/370 (and I still hate JCL), VAX BASIC and COBOL (and a weird and massive WordPerfect 4.0 macro) on DEC VMS (Alpha), C/C++ on Digital Unix (ALPHA), and C/C++, Perl (it may be powerful but I still hate it), PHP on Linux (Red Hat, Centos, Ubuntu, etc.).
I have work with databases such as Digital RDB (later to become Oracle RDB), Oracle DBMS, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL on VAX, Alpha, Sun and Intel.
Check out my professional profile and connect with me on LinkedIn. See http://lnkd.in/nhTRZe
I still think that Digital created some of the best ideas in the world: VAX clustering, DSSI disks (forerunner to SCSI) and the Alpha processor (first commercial 64-bit processor – Red Hat screamed on an Alpha!). DEC just could not seem to be able to give air conditioners away to someone lost in the Sahara Desert!
VMware is one of the best ways to get the most out of an x64 server. And I have tried Oracle VM, Virtual Box and Microsoft Virtual Server.
Outside of that I am a huge military history buff starting in the early 20th century. I love Ford Mustangs (my ’87 Mustang GT was awesome) and if I had the money I would have a Porsche 928S4. If I had a lot of money I would have a Porsche 911 Turbo.
I also play too much AmrA 3 Exile mod. Over 5,000+ hours...
I have a wonderful son, Cameron. I have a long suffering (Do you really need all that computer junk?) wife, Paula. I live in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador.
