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I’ve managed to scrap together enough money from website advertising, Google AdSense, and book sales from the first version of our book to build myself a nice little computer lab for my basement. With this lab I will be able to test some advanced configurations of multiple virtualization platforms.
What does this mean exactly? For starters, expect to start seeing new content on the site not only for VMware configurations, but also diving into the world of Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Sun Solaris xVM. I’ll ultimately be providing a series of whitepapers that describes the alternate platforms in the easiest way for the typical VMware administrator to understand. I’ll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of all platforms as well as provide use case scenarios that are best fitted for the various platforms.
For the geeks that are actually interested in the setup, the environment will contain the following:
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1 @ Dell PowerConnect 6224 Layer 3 Switch
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2 @ APC AP7931 Switched PDUs (Yes, I’m that lazy)
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1 @ Dell 2950 Single Quad-Core/4GB Memory/1TB Storage (Production iSCSI Target)
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5 @ Dell SC1435 Dual Dual-Core/4GB Memory (All PXE bootable into different configurations)
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2 @ Dell 2850 Dual Single-Core/6GB Memory (Existing ESX Test Environment)
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1 @ Dell SC430 Single Single-Core/2GB Memory/1 TB Storage (Development iSCSI Target)
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1 @ Dell 180AS Analog KVM Switch
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1 @ Dell 24U Half Height Server Rack
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For those of you wondering how I can actually get away with this without a divorce, I have a few pointers:
- Set up a Corporation or S-Corp and tell your spouse that if you don’t spend the business’ money, you will get taxed on it.
- Tell your spouse “It’s my job to stay on top of the technology and work won’t pay for any equipment to help further my career”.
- DO NOT say (TRUST ME ON THIS) “You don’t seem to complain about the money I BRING IN because of the work I do."
- Do not let your spouse see the electric bill (VERY IMPORTANT).
- Make sure you have a place in your house where the servers can be placed without being heard. There is no bigger deal killer than having the omnipresent noise of a harrier jet in the spare bedroom.
- Hope the person you marry is awesome and really doesn’t care either way (see hiding electric bill at #4)
As soon as all the equipment arrives, which it has already started, I’ll be sure to post pictures and final configurations of the initial environment, which will be a 5 Server Citrix XenServer Enterprise environment, built out with a mix of Server and Desktop (VDI) workloads. I’m also open to suggestions on what environments people are most interested in seeing for my “Round 2” environment. Readers have left 2 comments. No.1 Your points
1. Incorporation: Well I didn't go that far since I think it costs about $500 in lawyers fees to set up, but I did file a 1040 Schedule D one year to deduct several thousand in expenses due to a jerk who 1099'd me with no advanced notification.
2. She knows it's my job and sometimes I do have to remind her. It should come to no surprise to you that I spend many hours in front of the computer at home. A classic conversation has happened I don't know how many dozen times and it goes like this:
Her (when I'm at the computer): "Is what you're doing for home or work?"
Me (at the computer): "It's all the same."
3. I think she understands this but yes sometimes I'd love to remind her.
4. I handle all the finances but she somtimes looks at some bills. She watches the credit card bills with particular interest. She sometimes sees things come and go via Ebay. There is a lot that has come in through Ebay and other sources that she has not seen and it is much better off she doesn't know the actual costs. But I always make it a point to make sure she knows when I'm selling equipment. That helps.
5. The server rack goes in the farthest room in the house from civilization. Out of sight, out of earshot, out of mind. In my old house I could still here them pretty well even though there were in the basement. Part of that is because I didn't have a rack then. They were sitting in an open room on the floor. In the new house now they are all racked. If the house is real quiet at night, I can hear them, but then again I know the sound to listen for. Also, I think the sound of humming servers is permanently embedded in my brain by now.
6. She's great and deserves a lot of credit for putting up with what she does.
My electric bill approaches $250/mo. 60%-75% of that is due to what runs in the basement rack. I've got as much of it virtualized as possible.
http://www.boche.net/dropbox/rackvisio.jpg No.2 Forgot one thing you
Heat and cooling. You will have a lot of heat to deal with in the summer.
To display an extreme example of this, the $2.3 million basement of Scott Morris, quadruple CCIE:
http://smorris.uber-geek.net/lab.htm |
