It has been 8 months almost since I last updated this blog (oops) been busy with School and stuff but I have also been working on my lab so lets have a look at what has changed since last time.
For a start I now have a proper big managed switch for my core instead of using the little POE switch for that combined with a unmanaged switch.
The new switch is a HP 2810-24G. nice model switch. only L2 but has 24 gigabit ports with 4 dual-personality ports and it has the nice procurve CLI that I have come to love over the past few months.
I have also removed CCTV_SWITCH02 (HP 1700-8) as it was not needed but I have expanded my network to the shed so I removed one switch and added another. by another I mean a monster. a HP 2626-PWR its a 24 port POE switch with 2 gigabit uplinks making a total of 26 ports hence the model number. this thing not only chews more power than a microwave but it is 10x louder. already got plans to switch it out for a HP 2520-8-POE.
So my current network switch list looks like this
Core Switch: HP 2810-24G
POE Switch: HP 2520-8G-POE
CCTV Switch: Netgear FS108P
ServerShelf Switch: HP 1800-8G
Shed switch: HP 2626-PWR
WIFI
In my January tour I said that I had plans to upgrade the WIFI from a single Cisco 1131 (yucky) to something nicer. And I have made that happen. I now have a Cisco WLC based system using the Cisco vWLC and 3x Cisco 1142 AP's. This system is not only way faster than the previous 802.11g Cisco 1131 but because I now have multiple AP's I get great WIFI indoors and outdoors.
I have an upcoming blog post (mostly whiten actually) talking full in depth about the new WIFI system but heres a sneak peak picture from that post
Man the newer AP's look awesome compared the older 1130 and 1230 AP's I was using before and the WLC is officially a life saver when you use more than one AP.
Firewall and ISP
So in the last update I also mentioned wanting to move to a 1u firewall over the clunky PC I have right now. I am almost done on this. I have acquired a Smoothwall UTM300 appliance which I have installed Sophos XG on and it works great but it is mega loud and so far none of my quiet fan mods have proved successful (still runs too hot to touch the heatsink after 5 minutes) so that is a WIP project that I will have to return too once I have the budget for some different fans.
I also talked about upgrading my crappy ADSL to a WISP. that plan fell through though. so currently investigating a 4G solution for internet as 4Mb down is painful.
Servers
Servers have had a small upgrade since last time. my microserver now has 4x 1tb drives in a RAID 5 array with a P410 controller giving me a 3tb space for files as the single 500GB drive was not only dangerous as it held all my files with no redundancy but it also filled up quickly once I got going full force on my Plex server libary.
I have also upgraded the ML110 with an extra 8GB of RAM giving me a total of 16GB which is all being used. I need a larger server so I am looking at getting a DL380 G7 with at least 48GB of RAM so I can upgrade my email server and will also give me some more CPU for XProtect which is using 100% of the 1vCPU I have allocated it :|
Diagram
Last time I had a video tour. I have made another video tour video since the last blog post which shows the new switch but I have not made one since I got the new WIFI gear or installed the new POE switch (but I do show it in that video)
Because that video is not up to date and I am feeling extremely lazy I will say what your missing out on.
Network rack. yeah I got a little 4u rack for the network switches and with a cable management bracket the thing is so much neater but that will have to wait until the next update when I can actually be bothered to locate my missing SD card for the camera (oops)
So here is a diagram instead. this time using Visio instead of Draw.io
