"NEW" ALienwarE for ME :)

Hi.

Check this thing out~
ALienwarE  m11xr2
Its a little bigger than a netbook, and more powerful than 95% of the desktops/laptops ive seen
quad i5/1.7ghz  8gb ram / sandisk SSD extreme
Im in love with this PC. Show me even one apple that is even half as cool as this one (you cant) :)

I bought an ALienwarE off a local gentlemen . It was his baby ~ so I know if was well taken care of.

I LOVE this thing. Its fast and so much fun to use and it looks cool. :)

 

 

 

 

 

So I already ripped it apart (part of my illness)~ and upgrade/maxxed out the RAM on this beast.

If you look on the upper left, those are the ram chips, and the right (with the arrow) is the sata drive
 Its got 8gb / RAM now, DDR3, and I put a SSD into it (see below)

So here it is in mid-process of me installing the SSD, and imaging it to the SSD from the internal SATA drive.

 I had to buy the APRICORN SSD conversion kit.  It came with software, and worked great ~ and
can be re-used :P    Im sure Ill end up using this thing again .. it was a little costly ($30) but worth every penny. The whole conversion took about an hour. not too bad considering how much data was there.

Close up of the SANDISK SSD EXTREME ~ I love these drives :)

Here is the external DVD rom i used to run the clone util.

Thats about it for the moment.
I will post more on this one as I use it. I mostly use my netbook for work to have something that isnt locked down horribly by the company I work for.

They were not very pleased when I brought in my own 2 port KVM, and netbook - but I cant even install
software onto my laptop at work. I cant deal with that. Its too restrictive. I just bring my own hardware.

-B

My datacenter (at the moment) - ESXi whitebox - lab

Hi All,


Here is a quick little tidbit about my datacenter at the moment.
I assume there are other linux/unix/esxi/windows admins that have a similar setup @home.
I doubt anyone else has the nightmare I have but I digress.

So here it is:
Console / KB / mouse  {KVM 4 port}
Esxi 5.0
AIX 4.3.3 (soon to be 5.1) (POWERPC)
An IBM t60 (w/ an SSD)(4gb RAM)
Old p4 (girlfriends pc - got tired of losing her stuff during rebuilds/tests)
 An old wireless router, so I can connect WIRELESS to my ~own~ domain :)
And wedged in there is also a old p3 hp laptop that runs backtrack 5r2.

Here is my ESXi server. I put a large UV light on it. Its not a gateway, just an old case I found on the road and used :)

Due to inherent light properties of UV light, I cannot get a good shot of the server .

Lower Half, of my little datacenter.  I like the little cart everything is on. Its got wheels, So i can move it around to get to the back of everything and tinker as needed. Not a bad deal for free. Yes, I added that magical board in the middle :)

 

 

 

My carpentry skills aside, its not a bad little setup.


Heres a write up on my ESXi server (for those that want to build one for ~$150-200:
Although I suggest something better, as mines maxed out, and needs more RAM.
Mainboard : MSI G41M-P33
RAM - 4gb
Processor : Intel Core 2 duo 2.66ghz E6750
Storage: (at present) 2 sata drives (removed the SSD)
1st sata (main vm datastore) -250gb
2nd sata (storage datastore) - 500gb
So -  Around 750gb storage across the whole system.

Nothing else really special about the build. I had a crazy video card(2gb gaming - nvidia) but i removed it because ESXi doesnt care about that card either way.

I was lucky that ESXi saw/uses the network card in this machine. That I think would be the main sicking point when planning/buying a system.

I am able to run 4-6 VMs -~possibly more at the same time .. I want to be able to run more :)
Not bad for a home build.  I think Im going to invest in more hardware, and build a fast better ESXi server in the next month or so, but I like what I have at the moment.

VMs Running :
Puppet
Redhat
Redhatx2
FREENAS
Fedora5
Fedora6
(and more VMs but not running)

Take a look inside:

You can see my writing on the drive caddy on the upper right. it says 'esxi' and the one above was a windows drive, but now it is a datastore. (hostile esxi takeover of this box) The only other thing is a ide dvd drive (only thing i had sitting around that worked anymore)

Not a bad little deal. I love being able to have my own env. and ESXi hosts w/ my own guests.

Also, unrelated ~ Get a bottle of REDSTAG. Or JD's.
Redstag is black-cherry flavored whiskey. one of the greatest things ever.


Hope everyone likes what ive done.


-Out_