{"id":22,"date":"2015-08-15T20:32:48","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T01:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/?p=22"},"modified":"2015-08-15T20:35:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T01:35:27","slug":"our-datacenter-move-has-officially-begun-and-preliminary-thoughts-about-brocade-mlx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"Our datacenter move has officially begun! And preliminary thoughts about Brocade MLX"},"content":{"rendered":"

My company is preparing to move our corporate headquarters next year, and part of this naturally is the datacenter.\u00a0 All along we have hosted all our IT operations in our own datacenter inside the corporate HQ, but now we are planning to move operations to a co-location facility.\u00a0 I can see why we never did this before, since we had been running on primarily stacks of physical servers, with a high of around 22 racks, so co-location space would have been expensive.\u00a0 Also, connectivity was much more expensive and slow.\u00a0 And since our current HQ already had a dedicated datacenter space with big Liebert AC units when we moved in, it made perfect sense to host all our IT operations locally.<\/p>\n

These days, however, we are about 90% virtual, and so it makes a lot of sense to move our datacenter operations to a co-location facility.\u00a0 We started evaluating locations a couple months ago, and pretty quickly narrowed down the field to just a couple contenders.\u00a0 We considered options like QTS, Peak 10, Sungard, and several others, and after a whole bunch of tours, hand-wringing, and contract negotiation, we decided on a co-lo vendor.\u00a0 No, I’m not going to say which one.<\/p>\n

Management is really antsy to start moving in to the new facility, and so even though we don’t have power in our cage yet, or even, you know, A CAGE, we spent our Friday installing routers in our racks at the new co-lo. \u00a0\u00a0 You might wonder how it’s possible to spend most of a day installing 4 routers (and 1 switch! Don’t forget about that!) but that just means that you’ve never seen the insanity and overengineering that is the Brocade MLX rack-mounting kit.<\/p>\n

I love Brocade, don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 OK, I love most<\/em> Brocade stuff.\u00a0 But the rackmount solution that comes with the MLX routers is laughable.\u00a0 It has two front-mount rack ears, each held on with 4 tiny screws.\u00a0 And they expect that you will use that to rack mount a router that is the FULL depth of a rack cabinet, and weighs 70 pounds easily.\u00a0 Ummm… no.\u00a0\u00a0 The alternative is even more ridiculous, somehow.\u00a0 Brocade sells separately a rack-mount kit with a ducted air intake, that is certainly a lot more secure of a mounting solution.\u00a0 This piece of over-engineered aluminum is something like $2000.\u00a0 Seriously.<\/p>\n

In order to save on front panel space, the MLX has it’s air intake on the left side.\u00a0 The rack mount kit is a big 2U hollow aluminum shelf that has an open face on the front to allow air to come in, then it sticks out a bit on the left side with a vertical duct that rises up the full height of the router, and allowed air to be pulled through the intakes on the side of the router.\u00a0 This allows air to come in the front of the rack, and be exhausted out the back.\u00a0 And most importantly, it provides a secure shelf that the router can rest on, that is secured to the rack with 6 screws in the front and 6 in the back, in addition to the 8 screws that the router’s rack ears take to attach it to the front of the rack.\u00a0 At least I’m not afraid of a router that costs more than my house falling out of the rack.<\/p>\n

Anyway, most of my Friday later, here it is, proof that we have officially started to move in to our new co-lo facility!<\/p>\n

\"MLXs<\/a>

Please don’t fall please don’t fall please don’t fall<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Currently drinking: Humboldt Brewing Company Red Nectar<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My company is preparing to move our corporate headquarters next year, and part of this naturally is the datacenter.\u00a0 All along we have hosted all our IT operations in our own datacenter inside the corporate HQ, but now we are … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,7],"tags":[9,10,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcp-ipa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}