Server Room Updates!! UPSes, KVMs, and more!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
3,171 words · ~15 min read
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So, with all the posting I've done on social media and YouTube, things like
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our Norcco cabinet here and our
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surveillance server and our other servers and all that stuff, people have
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beenounding me. When are you actually going to do a tour of the server room
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and it's finally here. I've been putting it off and putting it off and putting it
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off because I keep making little changes and upgrades and tweaks, but it's at the
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point now where everything is pretty much up and running. So today I'm going
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to be putting some finishing touches on it in terms of cable management and well
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actually closing up the side of the cabinet here and giving you guys a tour
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of all the equipment that we've got in the Lionus Media Group server closet.
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The Logitech G303 features a lightweight design, an advanced optical sensor with
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Delta 0ero technology, and RGB lighting to match your setup. Check out the link
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in the video description to learn more. So, I want to start by responding to one
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of the criticisms people had of our server room when I first started posting
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pictures on social media, and that was that we didn't have any backup power. As
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the savvy among you will know, it's extraordinarily important really for any
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machine, but especially for a server to
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not lose power unexpectedly. So, a UPS,
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and in fact, we actually do have a number of them, four total in the
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cabinet here. A UPS not only acts as a
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battery backup in the event that there's a sudden power loss to the building, it
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also acts to smooth out the incoming power, which is good for the well, the
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life expectancy of any of the hardware that is hooked up to it. So, there is
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one issue, though. The ones we've got here uh were refurb units that were
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sponsored by General Electric. And it turned out that we had some issues with
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the batteries in some of them. The good news though, I've got my three
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replacements right here ready to install.
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So, while I'm pulling these out, I guess I'll give a bit of an explanation for
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how the the room came to be. Number one,
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originally there were actually supposed to be uh two cabinets in here, one full
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height and one half height right next to it. So I thought I could just kind of
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set and forget the back of it and then not worry too much. Well, I have needed
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access to the back of this server cabinet pretty much every other day.
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This is my brilliant system right now
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for uh controlling any of these computers. I got my monitor down there.
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I got my keyboard mouse here. So, so this is ridiculous. So, I learned a
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couple of things. Number one is that the 24U cabinet that I have out there is
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never coming in here. And number two, I
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need a better system for
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using a monitor, keyboard, and mouse on these servers. So, this is a trendet
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something or other KVM. And this was sent to us by racksolutions.com
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to hold a keyboard and mouse and wall mount them and tuck them away. So, I'll
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show you guys that in a minute. The one thing that did thankfully work out was
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the cooling solution for the room. I had originally planned to not hook it up to
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the air conditioning. This passive air intake and that ducted fan up there
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actually replaces the air in this room about once per minute and it has turned
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out to be just fine, thankfully.
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So, with the construction going on while we were moving in, as you can imagine,
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dust in this room has been a freaking nightmare. I have taken every single one
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of these servers out three times since first installing them and dusted them.
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And I'm probably going to have to do it once more. In the future, I'm going to
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put some kind of a of a filter on this
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and along the bottom of the door. But in the meantime, now it's not nearly as bad
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now that the uh construction is no longer going on in the warehouse outside
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and now that we've sealed the concrete floor.
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So, with the new UPS's installed, in order to minimize downtime for those
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guys in there while I switch all the systems over to it, I'm going to go
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ahead and I'm going to get my KVM set up
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first. Before I mount this to the wall, this is really cool. It's got a little
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magnetic closing thing on the top. It goes onto the wall. A little something
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like that. Comes with some mounting hardware, keyboard, mouse, and uh yeah,
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all that's left is to make sure it fits.
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Yes, we're good. Maybe I have to use deep scan mode. There should be a stud
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next to this. I need to know where it is. Okay, well, fine. I'm just going to
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go with drywall screws because this is
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already too much work. So, that is going to be pretty tight, my
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friends. Pretty tight indeed.
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All right.
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Don't tell me I hit a stud. Awesome.
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What the hell?
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Really? What are the odds? I went to
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mount the this thing with all drywall screws
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and I hit wood all four times. So, I don't need them at all. So, I'm just
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putting the wood screws right in.
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All right. Now, let's double check the door.
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Oh, so tight.
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Awesome. My good buddy Taran here asked me,
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"However shall you keep the keyboard in place when you close the door? Surely
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that will happen." To which I replied, "They thought of
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that. This, my friends, is a strip of industrial strength Velcro." You're not
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going to velcro the mouse down, are you? No, I'm not going to Velcro the mouse
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down.
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So cool. All right, so now
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Oh crap.
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Let's try that again.
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Ah, there we go. Look at that. There's
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little cable management holes. I can take my mouse wire and keep it in place
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with this. Not too shabby.
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Okay. So, next step then, monitor mount.
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Okay. Well, this old Samsung seems to work, so I guess we'll uh we'll go with
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this puppy. Okay. So, the first thing we need to do is take it oop off the uh
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included stand. We could also look at the instructions. Put the thing on the
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thing for like this.
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All right. Now, we got to wall mount this puppy. Okay. I guess right about
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there. Linus media group. We put the ball in and eyeball it in. All right,
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let's see if we manage to stay in the drywall this time. What the heck?
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Uh, you tripped the breaker.
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Oh, yeah.
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Maybe this is like standard practice. Maybe it's plywood behind this whole
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thing and I'm just not aware of that.
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Okay, I think it's just plywood back there. That's cool. So now this baby
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goes on there. For the final step, you
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put the monitor on. Just kidding, guys.
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Oh, wait. Oh, I I did do it upside down.
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Wait, what? Damn it. Did you? Yes. It's
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amazing they even let me have power tools. I even thought to myself when I
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was test fitting it, wow, it's really weird that they have you put the hooks
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on the bottom and then put the thumb screw in on the top. It seems like it'd
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be a lot easier if you went the other way around.
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All right, so the next step is to figure out how and where to mount our KVM.
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Okay, so that's interesting. The issue is that these are not going to
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make it around to the backs of these computers
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unless I take this side cover off on the
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other side, which which is an option. I think I think I'm going to do that. Um,
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okay. Hold on. There's a zip tie on there. Okay. We're good. So, this is
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just going to come off and go with the other one that I also have not ever put
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on yet. Oh, yeah. Just hold this here.
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You know what? Let's plug into the main
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storage server.
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Ha, it works. So, now all that's left is
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to finalize the position for this puppy.
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These This is supposed to go in the rack, but I didn't want to take up any
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rack space with it because, as you can see, it's fairly limited at this point.
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So, I was thinking, I'll just put them on this way, but the holes pretty much
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don't line up at all. I can only do one at a time. So, we're going to try that.
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We're going to hope for the best. This thing isn't too heavy. We'll see how it
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goes. Is your KVM Earthquake safe?
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Mine's not.
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Wish I'd gotten a drill. Get on my level.
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That looks uncomfortable, doesn't it? What does? Getting on my level. Just
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Just Oh, thank goodness. Okay. Okay,
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realistically, that's not going anywhere. So, now I'm going to run
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around and plug all this stuff in. And then I'm going to let everyone know that
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the uh servers are going to be down for a little bit. So, uh hang tight.
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Right about here.
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Yeah. Okay. So, we can actually check all of them. Okay.
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Cool. All right. So, the KVM solution totally
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works. All that's left now is to shut everything down, do some cable
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management, and then I'll give you guys a tour of exactly what everything in the
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rack is. Uh, hey, can you guys save your
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work? We're going to have a network outage for about 20 minutes.
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Everyone likes it when I work on the server room. All right, let's go. Shut
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down. So, I'm going to get a call from the
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security company telling us that our uh
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security system is shut down. Wow, it is astonishing how much quieter it is in
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here with uh none of these systems running. So, let's get the setup of doom
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the crap out of here. Oh, so
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frustrating. So, I moved a bunch of uh
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these power squids in here and now I need them out. And we just got to do a
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little bit of cable management back here and then we're actually in pretty good
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shape. What is this? Perhaps it is
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important. Well, can you unplug it? Well, are you sure? Yeah.
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Okay. So, that goes there. This goes
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here. Let me Oh. Oh, son of a cable
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management. Do you want it done nicely or do you want it done fast? Oh, shoot.
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No, don't turn on. Not now. Okay. Um Oh,
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balls. Okay, things are turning on randomly now. So, that is going to go
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right there. Uh, yes, it's okay. I am
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just uh I'm just plugging it back in now. Oh, shut up. I need a longer cord.
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All right, let's power on all the UPS's.
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One, two. Okay.
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Okay, that is too long for where it's
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running to. What the crap?
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Is this There we go.
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Okay. So, I think we're going to call the front good enough. She does close
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except for this cable that I have running out of the room to uh the
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Wancho. Whoa. What are you? Oh, yeah.
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That's another That's another one that runs out of the room.
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Yeah. So, we'll fire Fraser back up next. I guess the vault is ready to come
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back up.
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The surveillance system is back up. So, now that we've got everything pretty
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much good to go, I do need a better solution for some of these Ethernet
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cables running out the front door, but we're calling it good enough for now.
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I'll walk you guys through everything that's in here. So, this is our MRV.
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This is provided by our internet service provider. They figured it costs
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somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000.
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Fortunately, we don't have to buy that. We just lease it. These are the
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terminations for all of our Cat 6A
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wiring throughout the entire building. Yes, we are full Cat 6A, even where it
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doesn't make any sense thanks to a small miscommunication between my wife and the
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builders. This is our Cisco router,
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which we will actually be replacing because this puppy is a little bit
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difficult for us to configure since none of us are Cisco certified and you got to
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do it all via command line and because it's a little bit older and underpowered
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for the gigabit, that's 1,00 up, 1,00
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down connection that we have in here. So, we'll be replacing this with a
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PFSense box fairly shortly. This is our
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48 port gigabit switch with a couple of 10 gigabit SFP plus ports over here.
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This is our 10 GB switch. This is the the heart of well most of the servers
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and the editing den where everyone has a 10 gig Ethernet connection.
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This right here is the surveillance server which you've seen before. It's
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chalk full of WD purple drives, ASUS WS
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board, all that kind of reliable awesome stuff. This is our first UPS. So, this
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handles most of the networking gear. And then this is our 24 SSD server. It has
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24 960 gig Kingston SSDs in here in RAID
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50. So, this is a RAID 5. This is a RAID
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5. This is a RAID 5. And they are all striped together from within Windows.
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This does most of our file server duties for any of the projects that we're
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working on. It is equipped with an ASRock motherboard. It's an X99 board,
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but we threw a Zeon and ECC memory in there anyway because it's a workstation
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board that does support those particular parts. Um, it's got a redundant power
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supply in it now. That was something that I didn't get around to till quite a
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bit later. And it's got dual 10 Gbit Ethernet on board. So, this is one that
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actually has a trunked connection. So, it's capable of 20 Gbit per second with
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multiple people hitting it at the same time. This right here is a Newton
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server. This is our approx. I think it's about 118 terabytes or something like
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that. This is the vault, the archival server. Whenever we're done working on
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something, it goes off of Wanic and onto the vault. This one only has a single 10
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GB connection because frankly, we don't need to access it that often. And this
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this is the really fun machine. I'm going to have a full video on the way
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that this server has completely changed our video editing workflow in the near
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future here. But this is Fraser server. It has dual 18 core zeons, 128 gigs of
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RAM, two Titan blacks, and uh oh yeah,
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it's actually I threw a RAID card and about a 20 TB RAID array in there now as
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well. So what happens here is whenever we ingest footage, it crunches it and
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makes it easier to work on. Then when we're done our videos, this crunches
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them to the finished formats that we upload to the various video sites that
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we upload to. And uh this is a very cool
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little piece of machinery and it's the only one that actually extends outside
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the room. So this is the workstation
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that's actually hooked up through a Thunderbolt and USB 3 to that server in
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the room. And what we do here is we take all of our media. So you can see we've
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got this fancy pants Thunderbolt card reader. We've got an active StarTech
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USB3 cable leading to this Thermaltch dual drive dock. And I'm actually going
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to pick up another one of those so that we can have quite a few SSD docs. Um,
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our FS700 and our Blackmagic Cinema cameras all shoot onto SSD. And then
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we've got this Cal Digit um, Thunderbolt
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breakout box here that we use to run our peripherals. And then we're using a pass
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through to a DisplayPort monitor. So this is where we actually interface
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directly with that machine. And that video will be coming hopefully sometime
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pretty soon because we made some pretty amazing discoveries with respect to
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video editing workflows and how they can be improved.
17:36
So simply put, battlnation.com is a place to go and vote on your favorite
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17:46
which ones are the best. So the contest
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is running for a total of six weeks with weekly battles between different product
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categories. So, be it headsets, which is this week with the G633 from Logitech as
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the current frontr runner, or be it completely other categories like
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keyboards, which are coming up next week's, uh, video cards, displays, all
18:08
that kinds of cool stuff. So, you might be asking yourself, what is the benefit
18:11
of voting? Well, there's, uh, no benefit other than, oh, at the end of each week,
18:16
the top 10 participants on the leaderboard are entered to win the item
18:20
that won that week's battle. And at the very end of the competition, the top 50
18:25
are entered in a draw to win the Ultimate Gaming PC. So, you can check
18:29
out full details at battlnation.com, which is linked in the video
18:33
description. So, I think that pretty much wraps up
18:36
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,
18:40
hit that like button, get subscribed, and maybe even consider supporting us by
18:43
buying a cool t-shirt like this one, giving us a contribution through our community forum, which you should
18:47
definitely join by the way, or even just changing your Amazon bookmarked one with
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our affiliate code. The instructions are up there. Uh, so I think that pretty
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much wraps it up then. If you're looking for something else to watch, uh, I did a
18:59
build vlog with my son that, in my, you know, unbiased opinion is pretty darn
19:03
cute. So you can check that out. In the meantime, peace and I'll see you later.