(Part 2) Top products from r/servers

So would there be no real benefit over having one NIC for the base system and one NIC for all the VMs?

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I havent heard of Mobaxterm or Terminus, Ill do some research into them at some point.


Money is kinda short for me, but Ive found a UPS for around £120
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002RL0CKI/ref=psdc_430442031_t4_B007VHDKNY
Does this seem ok?
I had a look at some rackmount ones but theyre all £200 upwards (more than im going to spend on the R710 itself)

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It doesnt really bother me not running ESXi on the latest version unless they made a massive change like making live VM migration free or something. I havent done too much research into the other hypervisors as I have mostly seen ESXi and thought that was the most popular. Though I may try all of them later down the road, perhaps on a second system (I just had a thought, could I run a virtualised instance of the other hypervisors in ESXi?)

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From the little bit I have just seen, XCP looks pretty good.

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Does this switch look decent?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-LINK-TL-SG1024D-24-Port-Rackmount-Unmanaged/dp/B003UWXFM0/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=rackmount+switch&qid=1555791974&s=computers&sr=1-4

I have found some of the same model cheaper on ebay and, with my very limited knowledge, this looks to be alright.

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Also, how would I go about distributing power from the UPS, surely 6 plugs wouldnt last long before needing to expand. I have seen some massive extension lead looking things with 20 plugs and stuff like that but I assume one small UPS wouldnt be able to power something like that.

Ha! That's so awesome, you can learn so much from just playing around with stuff at home. Congrats on landing that job before even graduating, you've literally beaten the odds!


So with the power thing, I'd get a rack PDU (Power Distribution Unit) that'll plug into an uninterruptible power supply which will clean the power and act as a backup. You can find rackmount ones on Amazon for pretty cheap. The Cyberpower ones are solid, in my experience. Just remember not to put too many thing on the circuit. Might even be worthwhile to get an electrician to give you an estimate on doing a 20 AMP line, which will give your stuff the ability to draw more power. Just make sure you get a 20 AMP rated UPS and PDU, too!


As far as the router goes, check out Ubiquiti, if you haven't already. They make pretty solid hardware that a lot of IT people seem to use in their home. I've set them up for enterprise clients and they're pretty reliable. Another option is pfSense. Maybe pick up an R210 or some small 1u server and use pfSense as your router. It's a cool bit of software that even lets you integrate intrusion prevention.


You could honestly build a SWEET setup for $5,000 so you're going to be set lol. Something I bet you'd really really like, is hyperconverged infrastructure. It's more expensive to learn and play with because you need 10gb interconnects and a 10gb switch, but if you use, say, Nutanix Community Edition, you could have a 4 server cluster setup with failover. You could literally unplug a server and everything will remain online. It's really awesome.

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So, with the KVM console, I ask the same damn question every time I see the cost of one of those. I'm not sure why they're so costly. I've always liked the idea of them too, but when I actually got one, it was more of a pain than it's worth because I'd rather be sitting at my actual desktop when working on my servers, so I have it setup where I can SSH or remote into all my servers from my computer. Maybe invest in getting an extra monitor or two, too. Another option would be a USB KVM switch that you plug all your servers into, then feed into a monitor and run your keyboard/mouse into it as well. Something like this or this.


Lastly, it's better to have too much space than too little space in a rack, in my opinion. Also, keep in mind that 1u servers are quite a bit louder than 2u servers. They've gotta push a lot of air through a smaller space, so they're not all that quiet.

I paid $200 for this one (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000DZRY9C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1). It's not that bad, but people do recommend just throwing them out (apparently, they're not 'user replaceable batteries'. You install PowerChute on to a Windows machine (VM) and it can turn off your servers if you'd like. I've never seen a UPS that can turn the machine back on (weird).

To accomplish this you would need an entire chassis, as the 3.5” model has a different internal configuration. If you’re creative, you could probably rig something up if you got a 3.5” backplane. If you don’t mind a bit of a mess, you could do what I did with my R410 and buy these extension cables and house the drives in these actively cooled drive enclosures. You’ll also want a sata to molex adapter to power the fan in the enclosure.

Thanks! I'm guessing this is the module?

https://www.amazon.ca/TP-Link-TL-SM311LS-Single-mode-MiniGBIC-interface/dp/B003CFATYW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498497542&sr=8-1&keywords=SFP+module

With this cable?
https://www.amazon.ca/StarTech-com-Fiber-Optic-Cable-Multimode/dp/B0001Y7GU2/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1498497626&sr=8-6&keywords=lc+to+lc+fiber+patch+cable

Because it's FC-AL, from what I understand, I would need two of each, and plug one into one side, and one into the other and loop it back to the server? Or am I misinterpreting what FC-AL is?

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-D620-Laptop-Core-Windows/dp/B001U5617K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456870006&sr=8-1&keywords=old+laptop

That could be good?

EASY ANSWER FOR YOU: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/exchange-deployment-assistant


 


If you actually want to learn: buy a book like this and read through it and/or purchase one of the cheap-ass video courses from Udemy.

 


I've done both of these things and they are WELL WORTH the tiny amount of money to get you going. Yes, google is good too, but you're basically digging up a mix of resources - some of which could be bad info if you're not careful.

 


What sort of trouble did you run into with your domain controller that set you back?

 


Here are the steps I took to build a test environment:

1. Set up a VMware ESXi hypervisor (you can download the free version and use it for free) - Step by Step: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-install-vmware-esxi/
   
   
2. Set up a Windows Server 2016 VM and add the domain controller role - Step by Step: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/canitpro/2017/02/22/step-by-step-setting-up-active-directory-in-windows-server-2016/
   
   
3. Set up a Windows Server 2016 VM and then install Exchange 2016 - Step by Step: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/exchange-deployment-assistant