The discussion about labs got me thinking about what we all have in our personal labs. The "What's in your lab?" question is a standard one that I ask in interviews, it says a lot about a person's interests and commitment to those interests. |
Rob VandenBrink 578 Posts ISC Handler May 30th 2012 |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
I used to have a decent lab of about 4 desktop PCs a while back but I got tired of having all this in a 1 bedroom apt so I took it down / sold it off as I was able to learn at work.
Now getting more into security Im seeing the need to setup again. My current desktop is a 4 core 8G beast so I can use that for VMs but im still going to need a separate box for all the firewall(pf) network security tools (gpl) I want to try out. I probably wont be setting up any fancy storage. With this setup hopefully I wont be hearing fans 24/7 in my apt. |
TuggDougins 37 Posts |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
The folks over a backblaze.com have been kind enough to provide the details on how they build their storage pods:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/ I don't need 135 terrabytes in my vmware lab (yet), but the base design can be easily tweeked to meet a variety of needs. |
James 12 Posts |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
I've moved towards more, small embedded systems instead of fewer, faster (noiser) systems. So I've got a little stack of soekris boxes (http://www.soekris.com/) systems doing a variety of tasks. My personal mailserver, for instance, runs on one of these with a flash card containing the OS (re-mounted RO, of course) and an SSD drive for logs, spools, mailboxes, etc. No moving parts, low power usage, absolutely silent.
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Brent 133 Posts |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
Currently I am using multiple Linux and Windows VMs located on my laptop and on a quad core desktop.
I have an empty rack in my garage and I am thinking about buying two powerful servers, a firewall, and ... I'll see later what. I also have an UPS I can use (after I'll change the accumulator). My dilema is if I can put in in the garage. I don't want to put it inside the house because of the noise. The garage is partially heated, and I have no A/C. My biggest concern is the dust. Do you think that I should take the risk and build it there? If not, what other solution do you see? Thanks |
Brent 2 Posts |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
I've focused a lot of my lab towards Cisco certifications, so a lot of hardware is in switches and routers.
I currently have a couple of 2600X and Non-XM routers, a 2520 for legacy stuff, a bunch of 1721 which are convenient in size but the power bricks are a pain. I also have a 6500 series switch, four 2950 Catalyst switches and four 3550 Catalyst switches. I can accommodate just about any networking configuration I can think of. I also have two old HP DL160 servers that I'm setting up as LAMP servers. And i have two other servers that will serve as a Windows based server and storage server. All of this was bought on eBay for pretty cheap. |
Brent 1 Posts |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
I think I have the same problems as most everybody else so far - noise, power requirements, and heat. I've had some luck with liquid cooled and sound-insulated servers. SSDs and virtualization are a must, but add in ye olde routers, switches, and network appliances, and there's not a lot that one can do. Somebody needs to build a hackerspace for (actual?) hackers...
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hacks4pancakes 48 Posts |
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May 30th 2012 1 decade ago |
- big desktop system (4 cores, multi threaded), 12 GB RAM, no fancy storage, VMware Workstation, one additional physical NIC w/o IP address on host system (so one can connect the VMs to the NIC and outside world directly)
- several old notebooks to play with as victim / hack-me servers / IPCop firewall / pentest systems (we _do_ like real hardware ... don't we?) - "hardware store" grade switches and cables |
gebhard 7 Posts |
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May 31st 2012 1 decade ago |
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