1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,360 Previously on LTT, I tasked Elijah with The Impossible to build an 8v8 gaming setup that 2 00:00:07,360 --> 00:00:13,920 can be deployed in just 30 minutes for Whaleland. And man, it has been a painful month and a half 3 00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:18,560 sourcing parts, fitting it all into the server rack, validating power, cooling storage, and even 4 00:00:18,560 --> 00:00:24,320 networking, and deploying it here at Smash Champs kind of sucked. Linus, ow. Linus, you can remove 5 00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:34,800 your blindfold. Holy shh. Wow. We got red versus blue racks. Yeah. And there's enough room in them 6 00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:40,320 that we could double this next year. Shut up. Yeah. Well, we don't get to game yet though. 7 00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:46,240 Wait, I don't even get to game on it? Not yet, because first we need to talk about the super 8 00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:50,880 cool deployment system we use, because theoretically, it will allow us to handle the updates and 9 00:00:50,880 --> 00:00:56,480 maintenance of all 16 computers as fast as you could normally do one of them. Okay, fine. 10 00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:59,120 But I bet it can't update as fast as I can do the segue to our sponsor. 11 00:01:08,880 --> 00:01:12,560 When we left off, we had chosen all of the hardware and just needed to figure out how to 12 00:01:12,560 --> 00:01:18,720 pack 16 systems into a quick deploy rack and simplify system management. My original instructions 13 00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:23,200 were to keep everything as dense as possible. And based on these early mockups from Justin, 14 00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:27,920 it looked like we could have gotten away with about eight gaming systems for every 12 views of 15 00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:34,240 rack space. It's pretty damn good. Too bad it didn't happen. See, the Radeon 9070XT Prime GPUs 16 00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:39,920 we ended up with were just a tiny bit thicker. I'm not complaining since ASUS sent over all 17 00:01:39,920 --> 00:01:44,480 of these cards. And honestly, it forced us to rethink the design in a way that I think is going 18 00:01:44,480 --> 00:01:50,240 to vastly improve the thermals of our entire setup. And besides, it gives me an excuse to have 19 00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:55,840 two racks in the iconic two colors. We got these server racks sent in from Hammond. They're actually 20 00:01:55,840 --> 00:02:00,720 the same guys who got the orange server rack here at Labs. And I've heard they've done something 21 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:07,680 very special to them, considering this one's named blue Q assembly. This one's red. Red Q assembly. 22 00:02:07,680 --> 00:02:14,960 Oh my goodness. This is so wow. That's a very deep red. We probably could have guessed that by 23 00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:19,440 red assembly, but this looks gorgeous. Okay, I want to see the blue one now. 24 00:02:22,640 --> 00:02:29,440 What towards the camera? It's a 3d experience. Wow. Red versus blue baby. I love this. Oh, 25 00:02:29,440 --> 00:02:37,440 would you look at that? Holy cow. That is gorgeous. Oh, these are sick. These are awesome. 26 00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:43,200 I think it's safe to say we're going to have enough room. Our goal from the original plan 27 00:02:43,200 --> 00:02:48,800 is to have all of the IO of the motherboard and the GPUs on one side. And then the cables, 28 00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:54,160 we might have to remove the doors or cut a hole, but we want the cables to come out from here 29 00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:59,440 along the lines of our gaming stations. Each rack is for each team. So I guess on one side 30 00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:03,120 we'll have it on the other side, we'll have it. And then at the bottom here, it actually looks like 31 00:03:03,120 --> 00:03:08,160 we're going to have pretty decent ventilation. We want a line of fans because we want as much 32 00:03:08,160 --> 00:03:12,480 airflow as we can. Normally with the server rack, you'd have the air coming in the front 33 00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:16,160 and blowing through to the back. In this case, because of how we're going to have our mother 34 00:03:16,160 --> 00:03:21,200 boards and our GPUs laid out, we're going to go for more of a bottom top design. I'm going to leave 35 00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:26,080 this in your hands now to finish building it. And I'm going to talk to you guys about how I'm going 36 00:03:26,080 --> 00:03:31,040 to deploy the operating system and the games because the plan has changed just a little bit. 37 00:03:31,040 --> 00:03:34,720 I still want to go with diskless booting, meaning there's actually no drives in our 38 00:03:34,720 --> 00:03:40,320 machine to save on both cost and management complexity. My intention was to run something 39 00:03:40,320 --> 00:03:45,600 similar to Kenton's gaming house since he did document everything. But if something goes wrong, 40 00:03:45,600 --> 00:03:50,800 I don't want to have to rely on calling Kenton or hoping he updates his GitHub scripts. I'm sure 41 00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:55,360 he would, but we needed something that was hopefully guaranteed to have long-term support. 42 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:01,200 And that's where GG Rock comes in. These guys make purpose-built software for land 43 00:04:01,200 --> 00:04:06,640 centers and eSports events. That's us! And the best part is that if I fall down the stairs again... 44 00:04:09,360 --> 00:04:14,160 Totally ate it. They have a support team that our events coordinator, Chase, can reach out to 45 00:04:14,160 --> 00:04:21,680 any time he wants. I mentioned in part one that I would need a high-speed storage server in order 46 00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:27,920 to network boot each rack from. But the problem was, I didn't actually find one yet. Oh, how about 47 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:35,600 this one? The mini's form MSA2 is super power efficient thanks to its mobile processor. And 48 00:04:35,600 --> 00:04:40,160 it's small enough that I could tuck it into either one of the server racks or maybe even upstairs in 49 00:04:40,160 --> 00:04:44,800 the server room. It features dual 10 gigabit network ports on the back, and it has more than 50 00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:50,000 enough RAM and CPU cores that meet GG Rock's recommendations. They were a little hesitant. 51 00:04:50,000 --> 00:04:55,120 Usually they want to use proper server gear like ECC memory, for example. But they did note that the 52 00:04:55,120 --> 00:05:00,720 network card, or the nick in this little guy, is what they recommend. So I say we go for it. 53 00:05:00,720 --> 00:05:05,360 The main reason that GG Rock was concerned about our nick is that having a fast, reliable network 54 00:05:05,360 --> 00:05:11,360 connection is crucial when you're booting multiple computers off of a storage server. Also, they are 55 00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:18,320 going to use Pixie Boot and iSCSI, which can be, in the industry term, a b**ch. To minimize our 56 00:05:18,320 --> 00:05:22,240 chance of running into issues, we're going to set up Debian on our mini's form server 57 00:05:22,240 --> 00:05:28,240 exactly like the guide says. Exactly! Do not ask me how I know that. Then we're going to 58 00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:32,640 wget an install link for the GG Rock server, wait for it to download, and configure our network 59 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:37,120 interfaces. This is important to help with routing and making sure that our gaming computers will be 60 00:05:37,120 --> 00:05:42,400 able to find our GG Rock server. We type one last command, and that's the whole setup process. 61 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:49,040 Now we're going to add two 8TB M.2 drives in RAID 1. We probably won't have one of these fail, 62 00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:54,400 but since we're having 16 machines depend on reliable storage, an extra drive seems like a 63 00:05:54,400 --> 00:05:59,680 small price for a small man to pay. We'll create one disk image for games and a separate one for 64 00:05:59,680 --> 00:06:04,320 booting Windows. Now we need to upload an image to use. We're going to go with Windows 11 for now, 65 00:06:04,320 --> 00:06:09,440 but we chose these Radeon GPUs from ASUS, both for their excellent price to performance, 66 00:06:09,520 --> 00:06:13,680 and to give ourselves just a little bit of flexibility to run Linux on these systems 67 00:06:13,680 --> 00:06:18,000 once SteamOS becomes an actual thing. Now we just need to head over to our gaming machines 68 00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:23,440 and enable Pixie Boot. After rebooting, it will attempt to boot into Windows, but it will not 69 00:06:23,440 --> 00:06:28,000 work. That would be too easy, wouldn't it? Next on our GG Rock machine, we find that computer and 70 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:33,760 choose the right network driver to inject into the Windows image, reboot, and hopefully let it finish 71 00:06:33,840 --> 00:06:39,920 up the bootup process. Hopefully. It took me a while. From there, though, we can enable writebacks. 72 00:06:39,920 --> 00:06:45,120 That way, when I'm finished updating everything I need to on this one PC, we can then save everything 73 00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:50,560 to the master image. And that now means that theoretically, every machine can boot off of 74 00:06:50,560 --> 00:06:57,600 the same image. Theoretically. Theoretically? I guess we should build some actual computers. 75 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:03,280 This here is eight of the 16 systems we're going to use in one of our server racks. 76 00:07:03,280 --> 00:07:10,000 And Justin spent the last couple days 3D printing a whole variety of mounts that are going to help 77 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:15,200 us get all of these systems in that server rack. Which one's that? This one here is for the motherboard. 78 00:07:15,200 --> 00:07:18,960 Okay. And then what are these ones that I'm holding? Power supply, graphics card. 79 00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:22,560 Got it. And how are they going to lay out for us to be able to assemble this 80 00:07:23,120 --> 00:07:26,960 nicely? They're not just going to loosely lay in the rack. No, no, they'll bolt here 81 00:07:26,960 --> 00:07:32,080 to these shelves I got. Got it. Okay. I see now the pattern of these holes kind of line up with 82 00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:37,680 these holes. Correct. How many computers per shelf? I modeled for up to three really tight, 83 00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:42,720 but because of the new server racks that we got, we should be able to just fit two per. 84 00:07:42,720 --> 00:07:46,480 Because we have more height now. Because we have more height. Got it. Okay. So then 85 00:07:46,480 --> 00:07:51,120 let's build one shelf, I guess. Yeah, let's get one together and let's see how it's going to fit 86 00:07:51,120 --> 00:07:56,640 height wise. Motherboard mount, go there. Power supply, we'll mount somewhere along this back rail 87 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:02,480 here. Very smart. And then the graphics card will line up wherever is comfortable for the PCI 88 00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:07,120 extenders. Got it. Because I ordered very long ones because I wasn't sure at the time 89 00:08:07,680 --> 00:08:11,840 where this GPU was going to mount, if it was going to mount like down or up or... To be fair, 90 00:08:11,840 --> 00:08:15,920 that was the right call. Okay. Okay. And then what are we using to mount it? Just these like 91 00:08:15,920 --> 00:08:26,480 threaded screws or whatever? Yep. Standard M6 bolts and these nuts. Got them. Got them. 92 00:08:26,960 --> 00:08:34,960 Snug fit. Apparently the PCBs have some tolerance to them. Oh. You see, it's just a little bit. 93 00:08:34,960 --> 00:08:39,440 Ah, it'll be fine. Nah. You what? No. I'm going to, I'm just going to shave that down a little bit. 94 00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:42,560 I don't trust it. Don't do this at home, kids. Not with your PCI risers. 95 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:50,640 Push. I hated that so much. 96 00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:57,360 There we go. Okay. All right. We got our fans. Yeah. You want to, you want to roll on this because 97 00:08:57,360 --> 00:09:03,840 thank you for bringing my only fans. It's the only fans we'll need. That was a funny joke. 98 00:09:03,840 --> 00:09:10,480 Linus would have made the same joke. That's a problem. Okay. There you go. Cool. Awesome. All right. 99 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:14,640 Now. Round two. Oh yeah. I guess we do, oh my god. We have to do this eight times. 100 00:09:15,600 --> 00:09:22,800 Now all I need to do is build eight more and then ship it all to the badminton center. 101 00:09:24,640 --> 00:09:29,200 I'm not going to do that on camera. I'll see you guys there. Eight more. Well, eight, like, 102 00:09:29,200 --> 00:09:34,160 eight more computers. Not eight more of these. I would die if I had to do eight more of these. 103 00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:38,720 It's now the Friday before Whale Land. I already threw our minis for MSA2 upstairs here in the 104 00:09:38,720 --> 00:09:42,960 server room and I confirmed with the infrastructure team exactly which port I should plug it into. 105 00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:49,120 And as you can see, it's here on our network. Now, all I have to do is wait for Linus to be free 106 00:09:49,120 --> 00:09:52,480 being done setting up some of the couches and stuff. And then we're going to try to set up 107 00:09:52,480 --> 00:09:56,960 all 16 in our 30 minute goal. While I wait, I got to thank Threat Locker for helping us out with 108 00:09:56,960 --> 00:10:00,640 the Whale Land event. They're helping provide some of the network security here for the event. 109 00:10:00,640 --> 00:10:04,880 So that way it protects our computers and your guys's. They also provide protection for us at 110 00:10:04,880 --> 00:10:08,880 the office. So thanks Threat Locker. We're just finalizing getting the eight v eights here set up 111 00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:12,240 as if they were kind of set up by someone else, meaning all the cables were in place, 112 00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:15,600 the tables were in place. Then we're going to call Linus over to do the monitors, 113 00:10:15,600 --> 00:10:20,960 the keyboard, the mice, the headsets and power it on. And hopefully everything will work. I just 114 00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:28,000 got to route the last cables, the displays. Okay, I've got an update. I was going to test 115 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:32,240 boot one of the systems just to make sure it does work. So when Linus comes over and sets them all 116 00:10:32,240 --> 00:10:37,840 up, it's like, wow, this is amazing. Look how good I did. I'm not getting any of them detected now 117 00:10:38,400 --> 00:10:43,840 when I'm trying to network boot them. And Dan's blasting crab rave and it's driving me nuts. 118 00:10:43,840 --> 00:10:46,960 We're trying to figure out what's going on with the networking and then it might also be 119 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:50,880 display cables. I don't know at this point, it's coming down to the wire for Whale Land. I wanted 120 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:56,080 to test one computer for you that way. Oh man, everything's so magical and beautiful. I'm struggling 121 00:10:56,080 --> 00:11:03,200 to see my PXC server to boot everything from. So we have to configure DHCP to be able to network 122 00:11:03,200 --> 00:11:09,040 boot. It's getting there. This is a quick 30 minute setup though Linus. It's almost four o'clock. 123 00:11:09,040 --> 00:11:13,120 When you start, it'll be a 30 minute setup. Are we going to be able to get this down to that? 124 00:11:13,120 --> 00:11:17,440 In the future, yes, because we would have ideally the proper length cables 125 00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:22,320 that would be always in a bundle. And just could they just like be coiled up in the cabinet? 126 00:11:22,320 --> 00:11:27,840 100%. Okay, cool. This is first time deployment. It's going to have some irons and bugs that need 127 00:11:27,840 --> 00:11:33,680 to be, well, no, it'll have some irons to bug. So we're rebooting one more time. 128 00:11:33,680 --> 00:11:38,800 Elijah ran a command to try and refresh some of the settings on the server and let's see what happens. 129 00:11:40,960 --> 00:11:43,920 That is awesome. Windows logo. 130 00:11:46,640 --> 00:11:58,720 We can go home. We got one of 16 done, but that means the next 15 will be easy. 131 00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:02,720 Theoretically, now I'm ready to get Linus for our quick 30 minute setup. 132 00:12:04,480 --> 00:12:12,560 It's four p.m. No, it's four 20 p.m. Nice. Nice. Nice. Linus, Linus, we're actually ready now. 133 00:12:12,560 --> 00:12:16,000 If you want to set up the rest of them, I wanted to do one as a test before we just 134 00:12:16,080 --> 00:12:22,000 jumped all 16. Dude, she's responsive. Yeah, that's not bad. As fast as our network is essentially. 135 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:27,200 Dude, she just she just works. She's like a computer. Okay, well, let's set up the rest. 136 00:12:27,200 --> 00:12:32,320 Okay, do you think we can do it in 30 minutes because I have to leave in 27 minutes for Wancho? 137 00:12:32,320 --> 00:12:35,520 Yeah, yeah, yeah. This only took like four or five to get to here. So the rest should be fine. 138 00:12:36,880 --> 00:12:42,720 I mean, you guys probably saw the whale land setup blog. So you know that we've both been here all 139 00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:48,960 day. And I know that he's full of shit. Yeah, we went way over the top on the monitors for these. 140 00:12:48,960 --> 00:12:54,000 We don't want anybody blaming our eight v eight systems. So these are from as rocks phantom gaming 141 00:12:54,000 --> 00:13:03,360 line. They're 1080p IPS. Okay, that doesn't sound that impressive yet. 520 Hertz. Are these labeled? 142 00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:08,400 Yeah, whatever ones that furthest that way is the one you get. What are you talking about? No, 143 00:13:08,400 --> 00:13:14,320 I just mean are these labeled? No, that's number eight though. How do you know? Wait, what? Yeah, 144 00:13:14,320 --> 00:13:19,920 because it was laying there. We did this earlier. We organized this earlier. And then this is your 145 00:13:19,920 --> 00:13:26,160 USB hub that we're going to plug our keyboard mice and headset into. Elijah, you're killing me. Yeah, 146 00:13:26,160 --> 00:13:31,040 slowly. So is this project. Dude, this is sick. I didn't know there was going to be lighting. 147 00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:38,080 Dude, oh, she's warm. She's warm. Yeah, we might want to pop the top off almost. 148 00:13:38,080 --> 00:13:44,240 What we might want to do is put a bunch of cooling fans up here. Then if we did put the other side 149 00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:49,440 in and have enough to have each of these be an eight by eight, then we could just kind of 150 00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:56,880 create an air funnel. And the IO is actually surprisingly organized. Everything is just on 151 00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:03,120 the end here. Motherboards, GPUs, and everything's labeled. Love it. And each computer only has 152 00:14:03,120 --> 00:14:08,800 three cables. The Ethernet, one USB, which goes to a hub, and then the display. Damn, you have 153 00:14:08,800 --> 00:14:14,960 your Pog perfectly organized garage. I have my POS perfectly organized system. This is not going 154 00:14:14,960 --> 00:14:19,760 to be one of those projects where we just get it half baked over the line and then just leave it, 155 00:14:19,760 --> 00:14:23,760 right? Well, I mean, we can make another video in a quarter. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is 156 00:14:23,760 --> 00:14:29,440 final form, right? Yeah, for our peripherals, HyperX stepped up. They sent us 16 of Heather 157 00:14:29,440 --> 00:14:33,680 headsets, their keyboard and their mice. That way everyone here is on the same playing field. 158 00:14:33,680 --> 00:14:37,360 Nobody gets an advantage with their special little keyboards or their super light mice 159 00:14:37,920 --> 00:14:44,400 or all the exact same. Half an hour, he told me. Unless you want overtime. Have you tested these 160 00:14:44,400 --> 00:14:49,040 headsets to make sure that they handle a hub? Okay. Sometimes audio on a hub can be not great. 161 00:14:51,520 --> 00:14:57,920 I don't know. Every time I've listened to the hub, it's been fine. That's not what we're talking about. Oh, oh, oh, I think we just need to make sure the monitor is on the right input. I might 162 00:14:57,920 --> 00:15:03,040 have to reboot because we're using DisplayPort. But theoretically, we have them all. 163 00:15:03,040 --> 00:15:07,760 Theoretically. Oh, should we shout out motion gray who sent over 16 chairs, not to mention a crew 164 00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:12,160 of people to build them for us? Wait, that was actually motion gray. That was pretty chill of them. 165 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:19,280 Oh, cool. Any luck on your networking? No, Sean right now is making some changes at the same time. 166 00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:25,280 We're trying to set this up. And I think we got blocked in some way. So AJ is communicating with 167 00:15:25,280 --> 00:15:31,040 him in a couple hours. Theoretically. Theoretically. I will be halfway through the end show. 168 00:15:31,040 --> 00:15:35,840 Yeah. And I will be done this setup. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, buddy. 169 00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:46,480 I've seen better cable management, but hey, we put a fair bit of lipstick on that peg. 170 00:15:46,480 --> 00:15:49,840 Yeah, it looks great, doesn't it? But you can boot up any of the games that are on the desktop 171 00:15:49,840 --> 00:15:55,120 Linus. There's no storage in these systems. It's all booting over iSCSI and it will work 172 00:15:55,120 --> 00:16:02,480 totally fine. Oh, buddy. That's sick. Dude, this is what I'm talking about. 173 00:16:03,840 --> 00:16:09,280 That took 20 seconds and I am in game ready to go. We had an issue where all these computers 174 00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:13,440 weren't able to see the server that Linus created. So what we actually have done is we've changed 175 00:16:13,440 --> 00:16:17,120 the window setting to make it a private network. Now what we're going to do is we're going to try 176 00:16:17,120 --> 00:16:21,200 the system where we update one of them and it should apply to all. So we just did it to the 177 00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:29,120 blue eight computer there. Now all I have to do is hit checkmark to apply it applied change. Okay. 178 00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:34,080 Then we hit apply. Now you're going to notice all the systems are out of date. 179 00:16:34,080 --> 00:16:38,480 So theoretically, all we now have to do is reboot them. And as we reboot them, 180 00:16:38,480 --> 00:16:43,440 they will be getting that new network change. I also set the default refresh rate to 520 Hertz. 181 00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:46,800 Oh yeah, that is well then. So it should be going to all of them. 182 00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:52,400 Okay, here they go. They're rebooting. The storage is a touch slow when everything's 183 00:16:52,400 --> 00:16:57,520 getting hit at the same time. But realistically for gaming, especially some of the older games 184 00:16:57,520 --> 00:16:59,920 that we're going to be playing, it shouldn't matter that much. 185 00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,280 I want to give a huge thanks to all of the partners that made this possible. We're going to have 186 00:17:13,280 --> 00:17:17,360 everything linked down below, including the ASUS GPUs, the minis for motherboards, the G skill 187 00:17:17,360 --> 00:17:21,840 memory, the Western digital drives, the Hammond server racks. I'm probably forgetting something, 188 00:17:21,840 --> 00:17:26,320 but it'll be down there. Oh, and GG rock for all of the software help as well. And of course, 189 00:17:26,320 --> 00:17:31,040 our sponsor. That was a really cool video, Elijah. Really great job. Thanks. It's time for a song 190 00:17:31,040 --> 00:17:36,480 now though. So if you guys enjoyed this video, go check out part one where Linus first gave me 191 00:17:36,480 --> 00:17:40,560 the task to try to build one of these machines. That's where we discovered what hardware we're 192 00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:44,240 going to use. And we tried to brainstorm some ideas about how to deploy them.