Building an IKEA table-rack mounted lab for virtualization, CCNA-CCNP studies, and ZFS
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- This is part 3 of a video log, where I put together on the cheap a home lab. With this lab I would like to study different virtualization technologies, in particular focusing on Linux KVM and GNS3 for Cisco CCNA-CCNP certifications. In this episode the build process of the server is being presented next to the reason why I have built this second machine. The virtualization server is built into a small chassis with ears from Cisco switches, so it can be rack mounted in an IKEA Lack table converted into a lab rack for studying. Having a separate rack-mounted server in a different room helps a lot to reduce the noise, so that you can sit in a quiet and relaxed environment, and concentrate on your studies.
In addition to the virtualization server, currently there are four Cisco 3750G Layer3 switches installed in the IKEA table-rack, and an APC 7920 PDU. Soon I will change two or three of the Cisco 3750G switches to reduce power consumption and noise, and to be able to run IOS version 15, because the current switches only run IOS version 12.
There will be also a RaspberryPi built into the rack, which will be the serial terminal server, acting as SSH relay, Nagios and Ganglia monitor etc.
COMPONENTS I HAVE USED:
==========================
CPU: AMD FX8350 (has AMD-v, IOMMU and ECC support, and 8 corelets)
CPU cooler: Alpenföhn Brocken with 12cm fan (very quiet, fits into the small case)
MoBo: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 Rev. 3 (IOMMU support and AMD-v work fine)
MoBo also has lots of PCI-e lanes routed to the PCI-e slots, so VM passthrough is working
MoBo does not support SR-IOv, so you cannot share a PCI-e card among multiple VMs
RAM: 2* 8GB of Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 (no ECC, should extend it to 32GB)
Video: old 32-bit PCI VGA (Gigabyte MoBo does not boot without video!!!)
Network: 3* Quad Gigabit HP NC364T + onboard Realtek GbE LAN
Storage: 32GB USB stick for hypervisor + 4 mechanical disks in RAIDZ-1
Storage read/write cache: 128GB SSD partitioned for ZIL and for L2ARC
Case: cheap ATX chassis, bought used, converted to be mountable in an IKEA "Lack" table rack
PSU: Corsair VS550
IPMI substitute: native serial console
InfiniBand: still hunting for cheap Mellanox full-height QDR cards with VPI and cables
I love this. I had a similar idea and stacked 2 ikea black tables ontop of each-other and screwed them together. Allowed me to put tonnes of stuff into the rack :)
Really love the smaller channels like this. Perfect for viewing things that are within my price range. And none of this £25,000 enterprise only kit. :)
@Julian Bornemann commented, but YT is broken, so not all comments are displayed and often I cannot respond to them either:
The legs of the Ikea Lack table are hollow frames with of 3 mm thick compacted wood with 2 particleboard caps on the ends. So you can not safely mount anything to them. The screws wont hold anything.
==========End of original comment
If you remove the particle board cap, and place in a 42x42 mm solid wood and you push it into the hollow leg, it will hold things.
In my "rack" the weight of the upper devices are supported anyway by the lower devices.
Nevertheless, I agree that the hollow legs alone would not support a heavy server like a Supermicro 4U chassis or anything similar.
this is inspiring man!
i actually have something very similar setup in my closet atm but without the a wooden box around it
That IKEA table does an awesome service. Especially with the wheels on it, now I can just roll my lab from one room to an other. What a luxury ;) It was worth all the 6.99 Euros I have paid for that thing.
If you got too much free time, just make a video on your setup. From the comments even you might learn something new what you never thought about earlier. For example, this UNetLab stuff linked by Muhamad was new to me.
The trick 7:10 with the fan is new to me, that's useful for me.
Yeah, one must cool those server cards. Now I also put in a 40Gbps QDR InfiniBand card in addition to the quad 1Gbps network cards, and the QDR card is very warm in spite of my fan cooling. Of course, in a real server this is not a problem, since there will be 4-8 fans blowing through the chassis like a tornado...
Another great video! Thumbs up.
Thanks for the feedback!
Btw, regarding your comment on the server-side, for NAS and SAN functionality I will use the main Linux kernel and run ZoL (ZFS on Linux). ZoL will serve as an NFS share, and also create block devices on it usable as iSCSI targets. Though, I have not tested yet the iSCSI functionality as of yet, so I keep my fingers crossed.
I run a Cisco ASA 5520 and a 3560G in my house full time and how I got rid of the "noise" of the fans was to disconnect the internal fans and then cut a 200mm hole in the cases above the ASIC on the switch and the processor on the ASA and then mount a 200mm fan on the cover and then connect it to the 12V supply on the ASA and Switch. It keeps them cool and is whisper quiet. I have done it on other Cisco devices where I didn't want to cut the covers I just mounted the fans above the devices with standoffs.
Cisco 5520 for a home, wow, I would say that is overkill. Even an ASA 5510 would be way too much, but power to you man ;) The issue is, that here in German speaking countries the rent prices are insane even for tiny apartments. Even if I could somehow reduce the noise with a large fan, there would be the issue of what to do with the heat. If there would be a basement, or I could use a room for nothing else but geeking out, that would be awesome!
I used to have a 5505 but it only has Fast Ethernet and my Internet service was 300Mb/s so I had to go to the 5520 for the gig interfaces. Another decent router/firewall I have been using lately is the Ubiquity EdgeRouter.
300Mb/sec *Internet* ? Here in some companies even the local ethernet is stuck at 10Mb/sec. Seriously, here you would pay with buckets of solid gold for such a connection. I assume you have an asymmetric line, so I am wondering, what is your upload?
I have 300/25, so "only" 25Mb/s upload speed....hehehe
hi is nice. what software u use in the pc up to the switches
windows or linux.
hope u can help me out.
Just drop me a comment here if you have questions where I could help you out.
I am making a step-by-step series on the software installation and configuration, so people can build the same from scratch if they wish to do it. I use almost exclusively Linux both in my job and in my private life. This is just because I originally started out with computers by using SGI Irix, later Sun Solaris, and finally Linux.
You should definitely check EVE (UNL www.unetlab.com/ ) Where you can virtualize many many networking devices.
But unfortuntilly the developers told me that for images that uses QEMU AMD will not perform good at all and could have issues.
Vendor: CISCO SYSTEMS
Qemu Nodes:
Cisco ACS 5.6
Cisco ISE 1.2
Cisco ASA 8.0.2 OLD syntax code match 8.2
Cisco ASA 8.4 supports multicontext
Cisco ASA 9.1.5 Supports multicontext
Cisco ASAv 9.6.2 or earlier
Cisco IPS 7.1
Cisco Firepower 6.1 Management centre
Cisco Firepower 6.1 Treat defence ASAv
Cisco Firepower 6.1 NGIPS
Cisco Firepower 5.4 (NGIPS, FMC)
Cisco CSR 16.03 Denali
Cisco CSR 16.0.4 Everest
Cisco vIOS L3 15.5, 15.6.2T
Cisco vIOS L2 15.2
Cisco ESA 9.7, 9.8, email security appliance
Cisco WSA 8.6, 9.2 10.0 web security appliance
Cisco CDA 1.0 context delivery agent
Cisco NXOS Titanium 7.1.0.3
Cisco NXOSk9 (require huge resource x4CPU and 16G Ram siCisco XRv 5.2.2, 5.3.2, 6.0.1, 6.0.2
Cisco XRvK9 (require huge resource x4CPU and 16G Ram singCisco vWLC, 7.4. 8.0.100, 8.2.X
Cisco vNAM Virtual Network Analysis Module 6.2.x
Cisco vWAAS 200.5.5
Dynamips IOS
Cisco IOS 7200
Cisco IOS 3725 supports 16 port etherswitch card
Cisco 1710
IOL IOS on Linux (called as well IOU)
All versions, best on today L2 15.X IRON, and L3 15.4.2T
Vendor: Juniper Networks
Juniper vSRX 12.1.47D
Juniper Olive M series (old image)
Juniper vSRX NG 15.1.49D
Juniper vMX 14.1.4R8
Juniper vMX 16.1R3.10 VCP (control plane node)
Juniper vMX 16.1R3.10 VFP (forwarding plane node)
Juniper vQFX 10K VRE (routing engine)
Juniper vQFX 10K VFE (Forwarding engine)
Other vendors:
A10, vThunder 2.7.1
Aruba: Clearpass 6.4.X
Alcatel 7750SR: 13.0.R3
Arista vEOS: Best ever SW, 4,17.2F and eaBarracuda NGFW
Brocade vADX 3.01.1
Checkpoint FW: R77-20, R77-30
Citrix Netscaler 11.0.62
Dell SonicWall 11.3.0
CumulusVX 2.5.3
ExtremeOS 21.1.14
F5 BIG-IP 12.0.0 Supports LTM, GTM if loaFortinet manager v5
Fortinet mail 53
Fortinet FGT v5
Fortinet 5.2.3
HP VSR 1000 7.10
Mikrotik 6.30.2
PaloAlto FW 7.0, 7.1
pfSense FW 2.3
S-Terra FW, Gate 4.1,
S-Terra CSP-VPN gate 3.1
VyOS 1.1.6
Operating systems as EVE lab nodes and other tools:
Windows XP
Windows 7
Windows 10
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2008R2
Linux DSL 4.4.10
Linux Kali x386 light
Linux Kali Full most powerful linux for emulate attacks and scan networks
Linux Mint 18
Linux Slax 7.08
Linux TinyCore 6.4
Linux Server Ubuntu 16.04 with Webmin management
Linus Server 16.04
Linux NETem: NETem emulates a network link, typically a WAN link. It supports bandwidth
limitation, delay, jitter and packet loss.
Ostinato traffic generator 0.7, 0.8 ostinato.org/
This UNetLab might be interesting in the future.
For the time being I just stick to good old GNS3, because it should be able to run most of the labs.
I was thinking about Cisco VIRL because I could probably get a cheaper academic license, but it looks and feels the same like GNS3. Thus, I do not understand why would I pay for the same thing. OK, it runs IOS v 15 and it does switching as well. For switching I got real switches, which should be fine, and one can always learn more from real equipment anyway. I got lots of old physical routers as well, but the only thing they are good at is testing line cards.
what model # on the rack from ikea.com. . I can't find it online.
I have put the order numbers into the video for all components used in my IKEA rack.
Did you eventually not find a specific component online based on those model numbers?
Just let me know which component you are searching for, and I will try to look it up online.
The rack table with wheels. I like that 1 , cause its mobile. How can i find it in Ikea??
Ohh Wait , you turn it upside down... Duu , I see very clever... Thank you
8:50 every one is crazy now with ubuntu? don't know what you talking about. ubuntu has been the ugly duck on the room for years now.
Well, in general people all over the place are switching to Ubuntu, and for some purposes (like Nvidia GPGU computing) Ubuntu is becoming the new de-facto standard distro. Namely, Nvidia is delivering CUDA and the Nvidia driver nowadays as a Docker image on Ubuntu. Even for GNS3 you can install the newest one with a single command line instead of having to mess around and compile it from source.
However, I am personally not so much in love with Ubuntu, because it is trying to be way too cutting edge and include the newest, latest&greatest which does not always work... With Debian things are 2 years behind, but it is rock solid, and so far the upgrade process always worked.