New addition to the lab rack: a drawer. It’s the simple things that make lab life nice. Maybe I’ll get another for patch cables.

Pretty basic, but it’s nice to have a place in the rack to store screws, console cables, extra adapters, etc.

Drawer is 2U from AC Infinity.

because you’re gonna ask, and so is the bot, the rest of the rack, from top to bottom:

  • Aruba 2930F (JL258A) for WAN connections and PoE. WAN comes from an AT&T BGW320 buried in the back of the rack because Arris sucks and doesn’t make rackmountable gear. One WAN link to the house router (providing PoE), and one going into a dedicated interface and vSwitch on the ESXi box.
  • 2U vented shelf with Aruba InstantON AP11D acting as a router for the home network (5 VLANs), a Lutron Caseta IOT gateway, and a Philips Hue IOT gateway (Both powered via PoE)
  • 2U Panduit 48-port Minicom modular panel modded to take the AC Infinity fan controller. Ports go to several places around the house and the Wall O’ WiFi
  • 1U Raspberry Pi rack kit with a RPi 4 running HomeBridge
  • Aruba InstantON 1930 PoE Switch

Everything below is Lab:

  • 3 Aruba 7005 Controllers
  • Brush Plate
  • HP ProCurve 3800M (J9574A) as Lab core switch running L3 (lots of VLANs)
  • Aruba 2930F (JL258A) as Lab edge playing the role of an IDF, routed 10G uplink to the Lab Core -AC Infinity 2U drawer (the subject of this post)
  • Vertiv Avocent LRA185 console
  • Dell Optiplex 3050/Ubuntu for network monitoring with Grafana and Influx 2
  • HPE Proliant ML110 G10 running ESXi hosting Lab VMs, 10G uplink to each of home and Lab networks
  • HP ProLiant DL360 G8 (retired VMWare server)
  • HP ProLiant DL380 G8 (semi-retired Plex server)
  • HP ProLiant DL360 G7 (retired pfSense gateway)
  • 2 CyberPower 2200VA 2U UPS with management cards and dedicated 20A circuits

the Wall O’ WiFi, clockwise from top left

  • Aruba AP-565 (Lab)
  • Aruba AP-577 (Lab)
  • Aruba InstantON AP22 (Home)
  • Aruba AP-515 (Lab)
  • Aruba AP-303H (Lab)
  • Aruba AP-315 (Lab)
  • Aruba AP-505H (Lab)
  • Aruba AP-315 (Lab)
  • Aruba F-Series UXI sensor (Lab)
  • Acoustic Felt Hex Tiles

Not Pictured: - Aruba AP-515 (Lab) - 2x Aruba AP-315 (Lab) - Aruba AP-303H (Lab) - Aruba AP-505H (Lab) - Aruba AP-215 (Lab) - Arris BGW320 ONT/Gateway (WAN)

House APs: - 3x Aruba InstantON AP22 - 2x Aruba InstantON AP11D - 1x Aruba InstantON AP12

Virtual Machines: - 2 Aruba Mobility Conductors (Lab) - 2 Aruba ClearPass (Lab) - InfoBlox (Lab) - Windows 10 Test Client - Windows 10 Admin Client - pfSense gateway (Lab)

Cabinet: - Homebuilt of 3/4” cabinet plywood with rail/stile door panels and acrylic front - AC Infinity fan packs and temp controller (200 cfm) - 4x 37U cage nut rails (Amazon) - LED Pixel Tape (WS2811)