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