it’s the network

Posted on by James

My original intention was to bootstrap the SuperMicros ahead of getting the network setup, but there have been some bumps in the road. It appears my originally chosen NVMe drives are somehow partially incompatible with my grand design. I say partially, because they show up and pass S.M.A.R.T. checks, but they seem to be immune, impervious, or allergic to partition table writes. My online research turned up a few cases of the WD Black NVMe drives being finicky with respect to Linux, and apparently not 100% compatible with the SuperMicro hardware/BIOS/something. Therefore, while waiting for alternative brand NVMe storage, I decided to tackle the network. (It also helped that all my cables arrived yesterday).

lab network diagram
The IPs are made up and the hostnames don’t matter…

Being that I am in no way a Network Engineer, there was a bit of a learning curve getting the first round of things rolling. My previous “router” and “switch” configuration has typically been relegated to the realm of things like DD-WRT for my wi-fi setup. That said, I have so far managed to get the Cisco SG300-10 configured as a Layer 3 router with 2 VLANs: the default admin network and an additional network for attaching the Cisco SG200-26 and MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN. Additionally, I configured the routing rules on my DD-WRT wireless router so that I can get to all the lab subnets from my laptop. The final feat for the day was getting the MikroTik hooked up, configured as a Layer 2 switch, and routed properly.

As things stand now, I am able to pull up the administration consoles for both the SG300 and the MikroTik, all from my laptop and the comfort of my living room couch. Mission accomplished!

Tomorrow I should be able to get the SG200 wired up and configured with relatively little pain… I hope. If I have enough time, I might plug in the Synology and work on setting up my storage.

photo of SG300-10 and MikroTik CRS305
CyberPower UPS up and running, Cisco SG300-10 and MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN online.

One last thing… For the record, I did consider flipping things around and having the SG300 be the primary router, with the wireless router being on a VLAN. However, that would have required a disruptive change to my existing home network, and it would also then require adding a new firewall of some sort. In the current configuration, I get to keep my home network functioning like it always has, and the lab is completely isolated so as to avoid my tinkering messing with home life.

the hardware cometh

Posted on by James
Where does he get all those wonderful toys?!

Welcome to the first installment of my first big project for the site: my nerd-tastic journey to build an advanced home computing lab.

The primary purpose for assembling this technological terror is so that I will have easy access to a platform for testing out virtualization, cloud, container, and automation systems. Per my job, I do need to be able to tinker with OpenStack, OpenShift, Ansible, and KVM virtualization (and 2 of those really require hardware, otherwise I’d just stick with using AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud). Speaking of my job, a quick Internet shout-out to my co-workers for all their advice and input which helped me shape the final design (Chris, Rob, and Sean).

In the initial planning phase I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to balance between budget, performance, longevity, and power/noise requirements. Basically, I wanted to get the most performance that would last me a good while, without completely breaking the bank either in upfront costs or on-going electricity bills, and I wanted the whole setup to be insanely quiet. Ultimately, the bill of materials below is what I decided to use for the lab.

To summarize… The lab will consist of two SuperMicro E300-8D servers with 128GB of RAM and a 250GB NVMe local disk, which will serve as virtualization hypervisors. For additional storage, the Synology DiskStation will be primed with a little shy of 1.5TB worth of SSD and a dual 10Gb SFP+ adapter, which will allow the servers to access it over NFS through a dedicated 10Gb network. The servers have multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports, so each will connect to the SG200-26 switch for both an administration VLAN and a virtual machine traffic VLAN (the Synology will also have a connection to the administration VLAN). Also, since everything has enough onboard Gigabit NICs, I’m hoping to set up bonded pair NICs for the non-storage networks.

As of today, not all the hardware and cabling has arrived, but as the photo above shows, I have received a decent pile of kit so far… and I couldn’t hold off any longer. Since everything arrived that I needed for the Synology DiskStation, I decided to get the initial hardware setup out of the way.

Fresh out of the box, with 3 SSDs waiting to be installed
Final SSD ready to be slotted into place

The SSD installation was a piece of cake to complete, and it was basically 3 steps: remove drive bay, attach SSD via 4 screw mounting holes, slide drive bay back into place. I suppose the 4th step was to use the keys to lock the drive bay in place to avoid accidentally popping loose any of the in-use bays.

The dual SFP+ port PCI-e adapter
4 Gigabit ports and 2 newly installed SFP+ 10Gb ports

Installing the dual SFP+ PCI-e adapter card was a little more involved than I thought it was going to be, but not to imply that it was difficult. The way that the blank was held it place made it appear that it was something you could remove and slide the card in place. However, the process actually involved taking the cover off the DiskStation, seating the PCI-e card, securing via the supplied screw, and popping the cover back in place. So basically, the exact process you’d go through in a regular server or PC.

I haven’t powered anything on to run through the initial setup, but that’s mostly because I want to get the network configured first (I have diagrams drawn up for that part). I’m waiting on a few more cables to arrive later in the week, so until then the real network setup is on the back burner (at which point I’ll explain the “donated” equipment). However, I believe the SuperMicro servers and NVMe drives should be arriving before then, so I might set aside some time to get that hardware squared away as well.

alpha posting!

Posted on by James

After many years resisting heavy technology investment and implementation at home, since it’s my day job, I’ll be undertaking some big projects. First and foremost, this newly redesigned site, and then I’ll be documenting the journey here.

Stay tuned! (Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel…)