it’s alive

I have done it.

My lab is now the perfect mix of “real” cisco gear and virtual routers.  I just finished cabling up my server with two USB hubs and 12 USB-Ethernet adapters and wiring them into a pair of 3550 switches.  Then I modified my lab.net file to reflect the new mappings and voila – I have the perfect lab.  I even took an old 2500 terminal server and dropped it into the lab so I didn’t have to virtualize that either.

It’s a little hectic since the ifconfig from my dynamips server now has 13 different ethernet interfaces but it’s worth it.  Yes, yes, I know it’s crazy but eth2 through eth13 are all wired into the lab per the Internetwork Expert SP lab topology.  Pretty darn cool if you ask me.  What’s interesting is that the USB adapters are assigned an ethernet interface on the server and no matter what you do it always gets that specific interface back.  So if you do what I did please make sure and label your adapters as you are plugging them in so if you move them around you still know which is which.  Otherwise you’re going to be in big trouble trying to figure it out.

In case you’re curious the rack contains (from top to bottom in the picture), a 48 port patch panel, Cisco 3524-XL-EN switch, Cisco 2621 router, Cisco 2511 terminal server, two Cisco 3550-24 switches, the dynamips server (1U rackmount), a Xyplex 1640 access server and hidden behind all the ethernet cables is my 2U old-school dual 1.2Ghz AMD server.  With everything powered up (and including a server sitting on the floor that you don’t see) the PDU reports a draw of about 4.7 amps.  If you do all the math and assuming approximately $0.10/kWh (kilowatt hour) it costs me about $41/month to keep everything up and running.

And yes – I know the cabling is a mess right now, I just got everything installed a few hours ago and haven’t dressed the cables yet.  Nor have I bolted the rack down to the slab yet either.