Update to New IT job. Where do I start. Week 2.

[mehmin]

What Switches do you use?

In the meantime, you can get a LAN cable tester to see where each cable goes.

I don't think a cable tester is in the budget.

this is what we're rockin (although word is we're supposed to be getting new gear some time in the mid future, hopefully);

Dell poweredge T620
Dell T1102 (our active directory)
Dell T410 (our SQL directory)

switches;
Netgear GS116 16 port
D link Gigabit D6S 1024D
Netgear prosafe 24 port GS724T smartwitch
IOgear miniview switch PS2 KVM 8 port

I'll upload some pics of the spaghetti nightmare soon to give everyone a better idea of what I've got on my plate.

 

[DistraughtSysop]

So is there a CMD input that will show me the port on the switch/server the device is plugged into? The thing is, I don't think the guy who did the setup labeled anything at all. I'm going into it blind.

Typically, you'd get the MAC address of the NIC and then check the MAC address table on the switch to determine which port it's connected to. This only works with a managed or smart switch. It sounds like that 5 port Netgear might be a dumb switch, in which case there's nothing you can do with it except trace the physical cables.

There isn't anything you can do from the computer except to get the MAC from ipconfig and to disconnect the cable/disable the interface to see which interface goes down on the switch side.

I think I found something called netstat command to find out which ethernet port my computer is hooked up to on the switch/server. (by the way, my station is hooked up to a netgear 5 port switch... how would I represent this on a topology map???)

Netstat will show you TCP/UDP ports, not to be confused with network interfaces (which are commonly referred to as ethernet or network ports).

Something like this would be the icon for a switch on a network drawing:

 

[1etherer]

Are they letting you take pictures? May be good to check first if that is ok with them..

 

[mehmin]

Are they letting you take pictures? May be good to check first if that is ok with them..

...prudence prevails. Anyway, as you saw; I have a mess on my hands (at least for a noob.) Supposedly we're supposed to be getting new equipment. I could ensure to be available on that day and wire things up more tidily.

 

[mehmin]

Are they letting you take pictures? May be good to check first if that is ok with them..

...prudence prevails. Anyway, as you saw; I have a mess on my hands (at least for a noob.) Supposedly we're supposed to be getting new equipment. I could ensure to be available on that day and wire things up more tidily.

do you think they'd let me keep the servers?

 

[Lexluethar]

Good call taking those photo's down

IDK about taking the servers, depends on if you guys purchase or lease equipment. We lease our SAN and anything above 50k, we own anything less than that. With that said we have a ton of extra equipment and even if we won't allow people to 'take' it, we do allow our engineers to 'borrow' it for lab purposes

 

[mehmin]

IDK about taking the servers, depends on if you guys purchase or lease equipment. We lease our SAN and anything above 50k, we own anything less than that. With that said we have a ton of extra equipment and even if we won't allow people to 'take' it, we do allow our engineers to 'borrow' it for lab purposes

LOL. I have no idea what I'd use it for, but I'll be sure to keep you all updated if they let me "acquire" them... One of my favorite quotes; "the worst they can do is say no."

 

[root]

LOL. I have no idea what I'd use it for, but I'll be sure to keep you all updated if they let me "acquire" them... One of my favorite quotes; "the worst they can do is say no."

realistically.
(and every time the I want an xyz server running in my home question comes up I find compelled to point out the following...)

having equipment powered 24x7 is expensive. and honestly, a decent hosted server is so cheap now it's almost rude not to!

lets look at the figures.
Average Power Use Per Server | Vertatique
that site suggests that the average (now quite old) low end server will draw around 300W constantly.
lets assume that you get a newer server, (unlikely as you're talking about scavenging old equipment), and it only draws 1/3rd of that, (100w)

Where I live, (according to my energy bills.) electric costs £0.18 per KWh.
so, 0.18 / 10 suggests that this server costs 1.8 pence per hour to run, (convert that and it's around $0.26 (e.g twenty six cents USD) per hour... which whilst not a lot, it almost twice as expensive as renting a (1GHZ, 1GB) VM from Linode.
https://www.linode.com/pricing ($0.15 US per hour, with a slight discount for a month)...
0.18 / 10 *24 (hours per day) * 30(days per month) = £12.96 GBP / £19.35 USD... (per year that's £155.52/$232.20)

if you only want to mess about and not "host" stuff, e.g. have lower CPU/RAM/bandwidth and transfer allowances.
https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/

digital ocean will sell you a VM, with 1TB download 20GB storeage, 1 core processor (undefined speed?) and half a GB of ram for five bucks a month! ($60 a year, that's around a quarter of the bills just to plug your server in at home!) (and don't forget I already divided the "average" consumption of the age of server that you're looking at by 3!)


So, unless you have "strictly private" data that you don't want to "trust" someone else to handle, you're around a hundred bucks a year better off buying a hosted VPS solution, than having your own home server connected to ADSL...

and then someone else pays the electric bills, buys the equipment, sorts out the networking, replaces the broken hardware, sorts out disposal... etc.

and if you do have strictly confidential data, then in a lot of ways from a cost point of view you;re better off hosting it on microboard computers (e.g. raspberry pi, olimex, banana pi etc) since they (at full load) draw less than 5W!
and the olimex and banana pis have SATA ready to connect a disk straight to the board, (with no converters), the Olimex has UPS build in, ready to just connect a lipo battery...

Whilst you can't sniff at the price of a free second hand server, honestly, (assuming you have a USB keyboard and a TV/HDMI cable already, then you can pick up a new microboard <50$ disk <$50 and SDcard <$10 for less than you'll spend running the server in the first year.



What I'm saying is, that unless you have a strict need to use windows.
then you're much better off renting server space than even plugging in a free server at home!

 

[mehmin]

realistically.
(and every time the I want an xyz server running in my home question comes up I find compelled to point out the following...) having equipment powered 24x7 is expensive........

...guess I didn't think of that one. very good point. What are your thoughts regarding switches?

 

[carnageX]

@-root-: I can agree to an extent...though it really all depends on what you're wanting to do with the server. For just a file server, sure a hosted server is fine if you want to be able to access it externally.

But if you're wanting to have a media server (such as Plex), or even have a "lab" setup for messing with various things such as domain controller setup, IIS, etc., having a local server is pretty much required.