406 for work ? what do you do with yours?

[mjb]

You may or may not believe it, but we've actually got 12x 6509 systems, of which 8 are required in our new building

That's a lot for one building! In a couple of my previous jobs (large ISPs) I've dealt loads of the things dotted around the country in pairs or fours, all with redundant everything... Few 6513s as well. You don't want to ever see one of those loaded with 6548s - it's cat5 hell!

[highlander]

I work for Halliburton; we have offices in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Our building is a regional hub - we have IPSec VPN connections coming in here from small sites in the UK and Continental Europe, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russia, and parts of Africa. We also have connections into two MPLS clouds (connecting us to the USA and to Europe/Eurasia), and we host consolidated file servers, VoIP and e-mail solutions here (based on NetApp NAS, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unity, and Microsoft Exchange Server).

There's a hell of a lot of data throughput, and our room needs to stay up and running no matter what happens (we've actually had two major "events" in the new datacentre purely due to contractor errors, but I won't talk about that here) - and have had zero down-time despite these problems.

The server 6509 units are the VE models, and they each have four vertically-mounted 48-port gigabit line cards installed (our servers are all dual-connected for redundancy). The patch cabling is Cat6a (we wanted to allow up to 10 gigabit ethernet through copper, so as to future-proof the room as much as possible), so it is much thicker and much less flexible than normal Cat5e. However, between the two 6509 chassis as they are now, we can have up to 192 dual-connected servers (not including the servers that sit in our DMZ).

We actually have room for two more rows of server racks, and have room in our 6509-VEs for another 4x 48-port 10/100/1000 RJ-45 line cards, so there's plenty of room for expansion.

It's a really impressive room (not so much to look at, when you're in it; it's quite understated visually) - the amount of kit (and the variety of kit) is staggering

[mjb]

I've been out of the biz for a few years now... what's a VE model?

Is there no need for SFM blades nowadays?

[steve_earwig]

I work for Halliburton

Halliburton as in
http://www.blackcommentator.com/176/176 ... _large.jpg

[highlander]

I couldn't possibly comment... I just design/fix networks (and please, for the love of god, please pretty please remove that graphic before I get in trouble)

This is a regular old-style 6509 (not one of ours):


This is a 6509-VE (also not one of ours):


The V stands for Vertical, the E is for Enhanced backplane. Basically, it can switch a lot more packets on the backplane than a regular 6509 chassis can, enabling multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The vertical form factor allows the system to breathe from front-to-back (rather than from left-to-right); this means you can have rows and rows of these things (having rows of the old-style chassis means that the left-most chassis will take in cold air and pass out warmer air to their right, where the next one in line will take in the warmer air and heat it further, and so on until you get a puddle of plastic, metals, and silicates at the end of the row).

Some line cards from the old-style chassis will work on the VE chassis.

[steve_earwig]

Blimey, that bad huh?

[teamster1975]

[mjb]

The V stands for Vertical, the E is for Enhanced backplane. Basically, it can switch a lot more packets on the backplane than a regular 6509 chassis can, enabling multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Ahhhhh hence the lack of need for an SFM

The vertical form factor allows the system to breathe from front-to-back (rather than from left-to-right); this means you can have rows and rows of these things (having rows of the old-style chassis means that the left-most chassis will take in cold air and pass out warmer air to their right, where the next one in line will take in the warmer air and heat it further, and so on until you get a puddle of plastic, metals, and silicates at the end of the row).

Under-floor forced cooling ftw

I've also given people bollockings in the past for putting stuff like 6500s in server racks


not comms racks


You pretty much need the comms rack for cable distribution and airflow

[highlander]

Yep, agreed (though some of our smaller sites make do with server racks)

HP's newer server racks are pretty good for cable management, but not for any high-density patching.

Our new building's wiring closets have open racks (i.e. looks like a door frame, rather than a cabinet), with the a set of 48 patch ports above each 48-port switch, with 10 cm Cat5e patches running from switch to patch port. We flood-wired the building, so every port is live. Removes so many headaches

[peugeot406rapier]

only work related stuff i use is loading the boot and the seats up with stuff from the cash and carry twice a week! it gets used to haul my fat arse to work and at the weekends lots of shopping and some weekends 4 20something lads, 4 tents and 10 cases of beer! its never lts me down so far!

[malivuk]

my 406 is in taxi... for now
and literally, it's member of family (he brings us money )

[Captain Jack]

I don't use mine to do work, but due to countless clients' site visits, I solely rely on my car to get me there - i.e. I wouldn't be able to do my job without it. Done 30k miles in less than a year...

[gRoberts]

My past couple of jobs have only required me to get there and on the odd occasion travel to clients.

My current job will soon require me to travel to clients more regularly.

I changed sectors to get away from designing and implementing networks. Now I am a senior software/web developer.

Oh I miss the days of channelling cat5 and fibre cables.

Gav

[Captain Jack]

Oh I miss the days of channelling cat5 and fibre cables.

What I don't miss is the dust climbing around walls/tunnels...

[turbolag]

I gotta go to GMP for more MTB training in April, so my bike will be up on the roof in a Thule carrier securely bolted to genuine pug roof bars, all paid for by the firm, which was nice of them.