Reply to: Equipment for home lab

[Fat Tom]

VMs...

Well I run my servers 24/7... (have 13 static IPs and they do email/web/Public DNS for my domain)

used to have 4 home PCs PIIs and PIIIs... in addition to 2 proliant 6500 quad processor PII with 1GB and 2GB of ram and storageworks with 14x18.2GB SCSI disks in it.....

Ran VMs on the 2 Proliants total 13 win2k3 servers (1 Netware too!!).... oh and 1 XP laptop client...

All was well until somebody came round to read the elecy meter.... (was a guesstimate bill proir to that) promptly got a bill for £1700... missus not happy...

so I have consolidated to 1 dual opteron server with 4GB ram running w2k3x64 with currently 6 VMs (including sql 2005 medium Sharpoint farm etc)
server cost in the region of 2.5k but I needed to get into the 64bit world anyways.... also have 2x mini ITX servers... 1 FW, 1DC... low power machines great to leave on when I'm away on holiday etc as these do email and dns duties for my domain...

not sure about electricity costs yet as I'm on a £170 a month guesstimate now...

gotta say VM is the way to go.. I can 'install' a windows server in less than 10 minutes... sure beats the hell out of digging around in old cardboard boxes for NICs etc..

The joys of being an IT contractor I guess....

- Fat Tom -

[zeitghost]

There's a word for people like you ZG

Steptoe?

Or Mr Trebus? (He of the Life of Grime fame, now sadly deceased).

[DaveB]

I feel sure that the labs at Marconi weren't graced with a Murphy B40 or a pair of Racal RA17s...

And there's more upstairs...

There's a word for people like you ZG

[threaded]

Oh, I forgot the 40 years of Wireless World that lives under my desk.

Not quite that many years, but I have a collection of that too. Also Elektor, Practical Wireless, Practical Electronics and a good few of the others that used to be around.

All going mouldy in a the large cellar on one of my houses.

[zeitghost]

I feel sure that the labs at Marconi weren't graced with a Murphy B40 or a pair of Racal RA17s...

And there's more upstairs...

[wendigo100]

My god, zeity, nostalgic or what! I'm back in the labs at Marconi!

[zeitghost]

Oh, I forgot the 40 years of Wireless World that lives under my desk.

[zeitghost]

Avometer Model 8
Avometer Model 7 (x2)
2.5kV electrostatic voltmeter
Marconi 2955A radio test set.
HP8590A spectrum analyser
Tektronix 465 scope with only one channel working (but lovely none the less)
Hitachi V212 20MHz dual channel scope
Maplin timer/counter
HP3586A selective level meter
30kV eht meter
Cossor CDU150 dual channel scope
Farnell Dual psu
Kingshill Psu
Fluke 8010a dvm
Farnell TM8 true rms sampling rf millivolt meter
Marconi TF2600B video voltmeter
TV pattern generator
Home made audio oscillator
Farnell LFM4 audio oscillator
Marconi TF2700 bridge
Farnell TM2 AC/DC voltmeter
Telequipment CT71 curve tracer
Crash Barrier EM3 eprom emulator
HP3400A true rms voltmeter (x2)
Dataman Eprom programmer/emulator
Racal RA17L rx
Racal RA17K rx
Racal RA37 LF converter
Assorted DVMs
Digital LCR meter
AC/DC current clamp
Coline x1000 scope probe (this really impresses the girlies )
HP attenuators (x2)
Assorted obsolete PCs.
Tektronix TD200 dual channel scope
Vellerman "personal" portable scope (crap).
4 in 1 environmental measurement meter thingy light/heat/humidity/soundlevel)
Murphy B40 Naval rx. (weight 114lb).
Assorted rxs I can't be arsed to read the numbers off.
Eprom eraser.

HTH.

[DieScum]

So you found Dell to be ok for price?

As I say that is something I have priced.

Interesting that most of you guys use all physical machines. Anyone taken steps towards virtualising their home labs? If not, why not?

[chicane]

Where did you buy your server Chicane?

Bought it direct from Dell at the beginning of this year. So far so good, it's been a sound investment.

[BoredBloke]

I have one high spec pc - one lowish one and a laptop and a KVM switch

[darmstadt]

Normally just the 2 laptops (they run every operating system I require) but sometimes the x236 will be put in the boot of the car for conferences of big customer demos. The p550 will also go the same way but I don't know how I'm going to get it in the car as they weigh a ton.

[wendigo100]

darm, do you shift all that stuff around europe on your travels?

[darmstadt]

x236 running SusE 10.1 with multiple copies of zOS, zVM, zVSE and zLinux
T43p running SuSE 10.2 with zOS and zVM
T60p with 3 hard drives running SuSE 10.1 with zOS, zVM, zVSE, zLinux and WinXP
1 PC running Windows
1 PC running Windows but also acts as a telly
1 PC running various versions of Linux for testing
1 PC running SCO Unixware
3 printers, numerous USB devices and networking stuff

Coming soon:

P550 with AIX 5.5L
T61p
2 * x232 servers with Redhat and SuSE 10.2

[threaded]

You forgot the Cray.

I was looking around my lab. The Cray is in another building.