So, with all the posting I've done on social media and YouTube, things like
our Norcco cabinet here and our
surveillance server and our other servers and all that stuff, people have
beenounding me. When are you actually going to do a tour of the server room
and it's finally here. I've been putting it off and putting it off and putting it
off because I keep making little changes and upgrades and tweaks, but it's at the
point now where everything is pretty much up and running. So today I'm going
to be putting some finishing touches on it in terms of cable management and well
actually closing up the side of the cabinet here and giving you guys a tour
of all the equipment that we've got in the Lionus Media Group server closet.
The Logitech G303 features a lightweight design, an advanced optical sensor with
Delta 0ero technology, and RGB lighting to match your setup. Check out the link
in the video description to learn more. So, I want to start by responding to one
of the criticisms people had of our server room when I first started posting
pictures on social media, and that was that we didn't have any backup power. As
the savvy among you will know, it's extraordinarily important really for any
machine, but especially for a server to
not lose power unexpectedly. So, a UPS,
and in fact, we actually do have a number of them, four total in the
cabinet here. A UPS not only acts as a
battery backup in the event that there's a sudden power loss to the building, it
also acts to smooth out the incoming power, which is good for the well, the
life expectancy of any of the hardware that is hooked up to it. So, there is
one issue, though. The ones we've got here uh were refurb units that were
sponsored by General Electric. And it turned out that we had some issues with
the batteries in some of them. The good news though, I've got my three
replacements right here ready to install.
So, while I'm pulling these out, I guess I'll give a bit of an explanation for
how the the room came to be. Number one,
originally there were actually supposed to be uh two cabinets in here, one full
height and one half height right next to it. So I thought I could just kind of
set and forget the back of it and then not worry too much. Well, I have needed
access to the back of this server cabinet pretty much every other day.
This is my brilliant system right now
for uh controlling any of these computers. I got my monitor down there.
I got my keyboard mouse here. So, so this is ridiculous. So, I learned a
couple of things. Number one is that the 24U cabinet that I have out there is
never coming in here. And number two, I
need a better system for
using a monitor, keyboard, and mouse on these servers. So, this is a trendet
something or other KVM. And this was sent to us by racksolutions.com
to hold a keyboard and mouse and wall mount them and tuck them away. So, I'll
show you guys that in a minute. The one thing that did thankfully work out was
the cooling solution for the room. I had originally planned to not hook it up to
the air conditioning. This passive air intake and that ducted fan up there
actually replaces the air in this room about once per minute and it has turned
out to be just fine, thankfully.
So, with the construction going on while we were moving in, as you can imagine,
dust in this room has been a freaking nightmare. I have taken every single one
of these servers out three times since first installing them and dusted them.
And I'm probably going to have to do it once more. In the future, I'm going to
put some kind of a of a filter on this
and along the bottom of the door. But in the meantime, now it's not nearly as bad
now that the uh construction is no longer going on in the warehouse outside
and now that we've sealed the concrete floor.
So, with the new UPS's installed, in order to minimize downtime for those
guys in there while I switch all the systems over to it, I'm going to go
ahead and I'm going to get my KVM set up
first. Before I mount this to the wall, this is really cool. It's got a little
magnetic closing thing on the top. It goes onto the wall. A little something
like that. Comes with some mounting hardware, keyboard, mouse, and uh yeah,
all that's left is to make sure it fits.
Yes, we're good. Maybe I have to use deep scan mode. There should be a stud
next to this. I need to know where it is. Okay, well, fine. I'm just going to
go with drywall screws because this is
already too much work. So, that is going to be pretty tight, my
friends. Pretty tight indeed.
All right.
Don't tell me I hit a stud. Awesome.
What the hell?
Really? What are the odds? I went to
mount the this thing with all drywall screws
and I hit wood all four times. So, I don't need them at all. So, I'm just
putting the wood screws right in.
All right. Now, let's double check the door.
Oh, so tight.
Awesome. My good buddy Taran here asked me,
"However shall you keep the keyboard in place when you close the door? Surely
that will happen." To which I replied, "They thought of
that. This, my friends, is a strip of industrial strength Velcro." You're not
going to velcro the mouse down, are you? No, I'm not going to Velcro the mouse
down.
So cool. All right, so now
Oh crap.
Let's try that again.
Ah, there we go. Look at that. There's
little cable management holes. I can take my mouse wire and keep it in place
with this. Not too shabby.
Okay. So, next step then, monitor mount.
Okay. Well, this old Samsung seems to work, so I guess we'll uh we'll go with
this puppy. Okay. So, the first thing we need to do is take it oop off the uh
included stand. We could also look at the instructions. Put the thing on the
thing for like this.
All right. Now, we got to wall mount this puppy. Okay. I guess right about
there. Linus media group. We put the ball in and eyeball it in. All right,
let's see if we manage to stay in the drywall this time. What the heck?
Uh, you tripped the breaker.
Oh, yeah.
Maybe this is like standard practice. Maybe it's plywood behind this whole
thing and I'm just not aware of that.
Okay, I think it's just plywood back there. That's cool. So now this baby
goes on there. For the final step, you
put the monitor on. Just kidding, guys.
Oh, wait. Oh, I I did do it upside down.
Wait, what? Damn it. Did you? Yes. It's
amazing they even let me have power tools. I even thought to myself when I
was test fitting it, wow, it's really weird that they have you put the hooks
on the bottom and then put the thumb screw in on the top. It seems like it'd
be a lot easier if you went the other way around.
All right, so the next step is to figure out how and where to mount our KVM.
Okay, so that's interesting. The issue is that these are not going to
make it around to the backs of these computers
unless I take this side cover off on the
other side, which which is an option. I think I think I'm going to do that. Um,
okay. Hold on. There's a zip tie on there. Okay. We're good. So, this is
just going to come off and go with the other one that I also have not ever put
on yet. Oh, yeah. Just hold this here.
You know what? Let's plug into the main
storage server.
Ha, it works. So, now all that's left is
to finalize the position for this puppy.
These This is supposed to go in the rack, but I didn't want to take up any
rack space with it because, as you can see, it's fairly limited at this point.
So, I was thinking, I'll just put them on this way, but the holes pretty much
don't line up at all. I can only do one at a time. So, we're going to try that.
We're going to hope for the best. This thing isn't too heavy. We'll see how it
goes. Is your KVM Earthquake safe?
Mine's not.
Wish I'd gotten a drill. Get on my level.
That looks uncomfortable, doesn't it? What does? Getting on my level. Just
Just Oh, thank goodness. Okay. Okay,
realistically, that's not going anywhere. So, now I'm going to run
around and plug all this stuff in. And then I'm going to let everyone know that
the uh servers are going to be down for a little bit. So, uh hang tight.
Right about here.
Yeah. Okay. So, we can actually check all of them. Okay.
Cool. All right. So, the KVM solution totally
works. All that's left now is to shut everything down, do some cable
management, and then I'll give you guys a tour of exactly what everything in the
rack is. Uh, hey, can you guys save your
work? We're going to have a network outage for about 20 minutes.
Everyone likes it when I work on the server room. All right, let's go. Shut
down. So, I'm going to get a call from the
security company telling us that our uh
security system is shut down. Wow, it is astonishing how much quieter it is in
here with uh none of these systems running. So, let's get the setup of doom
the crap out of here. Oh, so
frustrating. So, I moved a bunch of uh
these power squids in here and now I need them out. And we just got to do a
little bit of cable management back here and then we're actually in pretty good
shape. What is this? Perhaps it is
important. Well, can you unplug it? Well, are you sure? Yeah.
Okay. So, that goes there. This goes
here. Let me Oh. Oh, son of a cable
management. Do you want it done nicely or do you want it done fast? Oh, shoot.
No, don't turn on. Not now. Okay. Um Oh,
balls. Okay, things are turning on randomly now. So, that is going to go
right there. Uh, yes, it's okay. I am
just uh I'm just plugging it back in now. Oh, shut up. I need a longer cord.
All right, let's power on all the UPS's.
One, two. Okay.
Okay, that is too long for where it's
running to. What the crap?
Is this There we go.
Okay. So, I think we're going to call the front good enough. She does close
except for this cable that I have running out of the room to uh the
Wancho. Whoa. What are you? Oh, yeah.
That's another That's another one that runs out of the room.
Yeah. So, we'll fire Fraser back up next. I guess the vault is ready to come
back up.
The surveillance system is back up. So, now that we've got everything pretty
much good to go, I do need a better solution for some of these Ethernet
cables running out the front door, but we're calling it good enough for now.
I'll walk you guys through everything that's in here. So, this is our MRV.
This is provided by our internet service provider. They figured it costs
somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000.
Fortunately, we don't have to buy that. We just lease it. These are the
terminations for all of our Cat 6A
wiring throughout the entire building. Yes, we are full Cat 6A, even where it
doesn't make any sense thanks to a small miscommunication between my wife and the
builders. This is our Cisco router,
which we will actually be replacing because this puppy is a little bit
difficult for us to configure since none of us are Cisco certified and you got to
do it all via command line and because it's a little bit older and underpowered
for the gigabit, that's 1,00 up, 1,00
down connection that we have in here. So, we'll be replacing this with a
PFSense box fairly shortly. This is our
48 port gigabit switch with a couple of 10 gigabit SFP plus ports over here.
This is our 10 GB switch. This is the the heart of well most of the servers
and the editing den where everyone has a 10 gig Ethernet connection.
This right here is the surveillance server which you've seen before. It's
chalk full of WD purple drives, ASUS WS
board, all that kind of reliable awesome stuff. This is our first UPS. So, this
handles most of the networking gear. And then this is our 24 SSD server. It has
24 960 gig Kingston SSDs in here in RAID
50. So, this is a RAID 5. This is a RAID
5. This is a RAID 5. And they are all striped together from within Windows.
This does most of our file server duties for any of the projects that we're
working on. It is equipped with an ASRock motherboard. It's an X99 board,
but we threw a Zeon and ECC memory in there anyway because it's a workstation
board that does support those particular parts. Um, it's got a redundant power
supply in it now. That was something that I didn't get around to till quite a
bit later. And it's got dual 10 Gbit Ethernet on board. So, this is one that
actually has a trunked connection. So, it's capable of 20 Gbit per second with
multiple people hitting it at the same time. This right here is a Newton
server. This is our approx. I think it's about 118 terabytes or something like
that. This is the vault, the archival server. Whenever we're done working on
something, it goes off of Wanic and onto the vault. This one only has a single 10
GB connection because frankly, we don't need to access it that often. And this
this is the really fun machine. I'm going to have a full video on the way
that this server has completely changed our video editing workflow in the near
future here. But this is Fraser server. It has dual 18 core zeons, 128 gigs of
RAM, two Titan blacks, and uh oh yeah,
it's actually I threw a RAID card and about a 20 TB RAID array in there now as
well. So what happens here is whenever we ingest footage, it crunches it and
makes it easier to work on. Then when we're done our videos, this crunches
them to the finished formats that we upload to the various video sites that
we upload to. And uh this is a very cool
little piece of machinery and it's the only one that actually extends outside
the room. So this is the workstation
that's actually hooked up through a Thunderbolt and USB 3 to that server in
the room. And what we do here is we take all of our media. So you can see we've
got this fancy pants Thunderbolt card reader. We've got an active StarTech
USB3 cable leading to this Thermaltch dual drive dock. And I'm actually going
to pick up another one of those so that we can have quite a few SSD docs. Um,
our FS700 and our Blackmagic Cinema cameras all shoot onto SSD. And then
we've got this Cal Digit um, Thunderbolt
breakout box here that we use to run our peripherals. And then we're using a pass
through to a DisplayPort monitor. So this is where we actually interface
directly with that machine. And that video will be coming hopefully sometime
pretty soon because we made some pretty amazing discoveries with respect to
video editing workflows and how they can be improved.
So simply put, battlnation.com is a place to go and vote on your favorite
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out full details at battlnation.com, which is linked in the video
description. So, I think that pretty much wraps up
this video, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. If you didn't though, you know where that button is. But if you did like it,
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much wraps it up then. If you're looking for something else to watch, uh, I did a
build vlog with my son that, in my, you know, unbiased opinion is pretty darn
cute. So you can check that out. In the meantime, peace and I'll see you later.