Not been around much of late, work has been unbelievable.
We're adding on 27,000 Sq Feet to our already 25,000 Sq Feet of office at work and to connect the two halves together, we're having to run 6 pair fiber and Cat 6 between the old and new buildings, not to mention adding a second redundant Fiber Internet circuit in the new side. This all amid many delays that have caused setbacks on new internet and IPVPN circuits we're turning up while at the same time relocating our Off Site Server Cluster to a new colo 150 miles from the present one. We're also (at the same time (I don't know why I thought THAT would be a good idea!) turning up a new phone system.
All of these combined have made my life a living hell the last few months.
Now, this morning, we find out that our downstairs server room that is going to have a lift out floor, was poured too shallow and they are going to have to saw, jackhammer and re-pour the sub-floor, which puts our already behind project now even more behind. Bear in mind that this is at a stage where the upstairs is about 90% complete and furniture is already in the offices and the downstairs already has most of the walls up and furniture should be going in late next week.
I'm going to be ready for a LONG vacation after this sucker is finished.
I'll post some photos of it all soon.
Looking forward to seeing them... now maybe you should go to sea! And bring that beauty with you, and nuzzle her assets, brother!!
Downstairs and upstairs server rooms.
The one without 3 of the 4 walls and equipment already light up on an old UPS is our downstairs server room. It has to be where we can put in 2 full size racks before we can light up the building and has yet to have the pit deepened for the lift out floors to be installed.
Upstairs, we have one of 3 full size racks and 1 media rack installed. Others are in a hallway waiting for the contractor to finish punching down the data wire for the second floor.
And the Second Floor hallway.
As you can see, the offices are just about finished and we still don't have the ability to provide network data or phone service.
FUN!
And now, the 1st floor server room sub-floor is finally finished and they will start installing the lift out glass floor today!
Been really busy lately with our new building at work and we are days away from having an occupancy permit and now, even more real life stress and pressure has has been piled on.
As you have probably heard by now, there have been some horrible wildfires in and around the Gatlinburg, TN area. Mrs. T and I have a cabin up on Ski Mountain that we lease out 15-20 days a month through an agency and block most holidays too. The rental income we get pays the mortgage each month usually. We get up there at least once a month usually and she spends a lot more time up there than I get to.
The oldest daughter lives about 45 minutes from G'burg (as opposed to 10 hours from our home in SE Louisiana) and Mrs. T can spend time with the grand-kids easily while up there.
Luckily, neither one of us was up there the last few weeks and no one was renting it this week, especially on Monday, Nov 28th when the fires started. As of this morning, there were 11 confirmed dead and many more still missing from the fires up there.
As of right now, we have no idea if the cabin is damaged or destroyed and there's not been much information forthcoming out of Gatlinburg on what's been destroyed, especially on private homes, and they have not opened up the area where the cabin is yet and no plans to do so until sometime late next week.
We had planned for our family spending Christmas and New Years up there this year and now, everything is on hold.
If you're the praying type, say a prayer for all of the folks still missing in the area.
Picture is the day we bought the cabin and my LR that got destroyed last year...
And I just got confirmation that it is gone. Nothing left.
Mrs. T is devastated.
OMG, that is horrible. I am so sorry for you and the Missus. Insurance?
(12-03-2016, 09:07 PM)Bonecracker Wrote: [ -> ]OMG, that is horrible. I am so sorry for you and the Missus. Insurance?
Well it's been a month since I last logged in and posted, there has been a lot of turmoil in our life of late with the pressure of the new office addition and then our vacation home burning down...
Was the house insured? Yes. When it might pay out? Who knows.
Not even sure if we will rebuild at this point, it's a wait and see kind of thing.
We finally got to lay eyes on the devastation two days after Christmas. This is all that's left:
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attachment=4993]
That is just awful, I feel for you Tug...all of my best wishes. Glad to hear it was insured. Most importantly, no loved ones harmed.
I just hope the insurance bastards actually do something right for once and quickly pay out a legitimate claim!
(01-06-2017, 04:25 PM)Bonecracker Wrote: [ -> ]I just hope the insurance bastards actually do something right for once and quickly pay out a legitimate claim!
Looking like the earliest we might see a settlement is April. Mrs. T has tracked down a set of "As-Built" plans that were made of the house by the previous owner and She's pretty much set on building it back just as it was, except for some minor changes to the two bedrooms/baths. The bathrooms were a bit small and by taking off just 2' from the width of the already huge rooms, she and the architect think they can do it.
I just hope the insurance comes in at what we think it should on contents, especially since we just put in all new appliances and most of the furniture last year.
On a happier note, we finally moved into our new office spaces and my server rooms turned out GREAT! I'll post some photos of them later.
Good news indeed. On a lighter note, can you share some details about your datacenter/hardware? I'm personally building out small server room at my house. It powers this site, you know!
(01-24-2017, 04:44 PM)JustSomeone Wrote: [ -> ]Good news indeed. On a lighter note, can you share some details about your datacenter/hardware? I'm personally building out small server room at my house. It powers this site, you know!
We have two identical stacks, one in our main offices and one in a Texas Colo. Each stack replicates with the other constantly and they have fail over capability in case one of them goes down or has a loss of network connection.
Each stack has two Cisco high availability servers with 192GB memory each, running a vSphere virtual environment, EMC SAN arrays with total usable capacity of 176TB, 12 - 10GB Cisco and Avaya POE Switches throughout the facilities with all fiber interconnections and backbone.
Redundant 200mbps fiber internet circuits with load sharing capabilities and 100mbps fiber IPVPN Network between sites and the Colo, both provisioned with BGP Routing (two different providers with totally separate networks that do not touch each other and advertising our Owned /24 IP Block).
At our main offices here, we have a Quest (formerly Dell) AppAssure Backup/Recovery Array with Rapid Recovery and a 120TB dedicated storage array.
All in all, we have well over $1,500,000 worth of Hardware and Software involved.
Fun stuff, huh?
Tugboatcap
Must have had a few people's eyes glaze over on that one...
Tugboatcap
(01-25-2017, 05:28 PM)Tugboatcap Wrote: [ -> ]We have two identical stacks, one in our main offices and one in a Texas Colo. Each stack replicates with the other constantly and they have fail over capability in case one of them goes down or has a loss of network connection.
Each stack has two Cisco high availability servers with 192GB memory each, running a vSphere virtual environment, EMC SAN arrays with total usable capacity of 176TB, 12 - 10GB Cisco and Avaya POE Switches throughout the facilities with all fiber interconnections and backbone.
Redundant 200mbps fiber internet circuits with load sharing capabilities and 100mbps fiber IPVPN Network between sites and the Colo, both provisioned with BGP Routing (two different providers with totally separate networks that do not touch each other and advertising our Owned /24 IP Block).
At our main offices here, we have a Quest (formerly Dell) AppAssure Backup/Recovery Array with Rapid Recovery and a 120TB dedicated storage array.
All in all, we have well over $1,500,000 worth of Hardware and Software involved.
Fun stuff, huh?
Tugboatcap
That's very cool. We have a very similar setup at my current office, and we're currently trying to get a proper DR site setup. We might be in the Texas area too. We recently upgraded our local vSphere to 6.5. I can't say I'm happy with the web only interface. I was quite at home with the VIC, thankyouverymuch.
And just realized I never posted photos of the finished server rooms. Here they are:
Check out our crazy clear floor with LED Back-lighting. Just don't take laps around it in cold dry weather or you get the CRAP knocked out of you from static discharge if you touch the racks or door. We're supposed to get a coating put on it next week that kills static buildup.
And more:
Racks, data cabling and fiber encoder for one of our 3 redundant fiber circuits.
Upstairs Server Room (inside of the 3rd Party IT Work Room, behind the innocuous looking door with badge-only access...)
And the last of them:
AV Rack and Data Cabling.
And last, but not least, our DR Cabinet somewhere out there in the cloud...
I see your networking and storage systems. Where is your compute?