As I was updating to the latest WordPress (2.8.6) I noticed that the About page still showed my old setup.

I moved to a shiny ‘new build’ flat a year or so ago and unfortunately my old Compaq 9000 Rack Cabinet wouldn’t have fitted up the stair case :/ so I bought a nice flat pack 28u Rack Cabinet and set about virtualising all my legacy stuff.

VM Hosts

Using the 2 S411 cases I already had I installed;
2x ASUS P5B-VM
2x Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
8x Corsair 4GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2
2x Hiper 880W 85% Efficient PSU
4x Adaptec 1430SA 4Port PCI Express SATA II RAID Card
16x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500Gb SATA II Disk Drives
2x Plexus MV 1200VA UPS

Because I wanted performance at cheaply as possible I had to use HyperV instead of ESXi because all the hardware I had chosen worked flawlessly in Windows Server 2008 but is obviously unsupported in ESXi.

I upgraded my workstation at the same time but that was basically the same other than the motherboard ( ASUS P5N-D ) and two XFX 9800GTX+ 765MHz Edition graphics cards.

I didn’t bother with any P2V stuff as the old VM’s / physicals were a mix of Windows Server 2003 and CentOS 5.2.

Networks

I’d recently moved to Be* Internet and had ordered 16 IP’s (to go with my /48 IPv6 subnet) I had to split the Network off using 2 physical firewalls (a Cisco Pix 501 and a Netscreen NS5GT). Eventually I’ll probably replace one of them with a Cisco ASA 5505 Security Pack to do the multiple subinterface VLAN stuff but at £600 still I can live without it!.

The 3Com SuperStack 3 4400 proved itself a good investment yet again allowing me to VLAN off the internet facing VM’s from my internal ones using HyperV’s VLAN tagging config.

The Cisco 2600 router coupled with a Windows 2008 VM sorted out the IPv6 Network again.

All in all it was a pretty painless process and to the point of this post, pictures;

The Old Kit

All the old kit was either FreeCycled or otherwise donated to those who would benefit from DL380′s, switches, Fibre/Ethernet converters etc etc.

The saddest thing was smashing 5Tb of 300Gb / 250Gb / 160Gb / 80Gb / 40Gb disks into powder.