April 2017 - Hemo Tips

Server 101: Server Rack Components

April 29, 2017 Hemo Infrastructure, Server 101

A lot of equipment is installed in server racks besides servers. These server devices serve different purposes such as cable management and energy supply. In this post, we will discover these devices and learn more about them and why are they used.

PDU

Front Side of a PDU — -Courtesy of gdftech

In short, PDU which stands for power distribution unit is an expensive power strip on steroid. So, it can be defined as a special type of power strips that distributes electricity to server and other devices. Moreover, they are designed to be efficient, safe and able to distribute sufficient energy to all server racks. PDUs excel when multiple three-phase power sources are used together to power server rack equipment.

UPS

UPS which stands for Uninterrupted Power Supply is a device that either placed in a server rack or in a separate location and it is serves two purposes. First, it contains a battery pack that feeds server room equipment during a power outage for a finite time and prevents any data corruption due to power outage. Second, Uninterrupted Power Supplies cleans the electricity that feeds the devices. As a result, devices will work better and prevent power related faults. Modern smart UPSs are capable to notify system administrators about power outages and shut down devics safely when the batter is out to run out of charge.

KVM Switch

KVM (Keyboard, video, Mouse) switch or known as KVM for short is a device that is used to allow a single mouse, keyboard and monitor screen to be used by multiple computers. Thus, less peripheral device in the server room, especially that most device are rarely accessed directly.

KVM can connect to devices in two different methods. First method is by using a USB and a video cables (VGA, HDMI or DVI) between each device and the KVM. The second method that is usually used by the higher end KVM switches is by depending on IP protocols to connect between the KVM and the devices i.e. using the current network infrastructure to connect remote machines to the KVM switch.

Patch Panel

One of the main concepts in network cable management is decoupling. Decoupling means in this case is separating between access switches and end device, by adding a patch device in between. Adding a patch panel helps network and system administrators to reassign network cables between different network devices easily.

Patch panels consist of two sides. First, the rear side which is used to connect between the end machines and the patch panel. Second, the front side which is used to connect between patch panels are network devices.

Hemo’s Take

In real life, server racks have more equipment than mentioned here such as NAS, Tape drives and even GPS-based NTP servers. However, these devices the most important and about no proper server rack is without them.

Small business IT consultancy: Requirement Gathering

April 22, 2017 Hemo Infrastructure, Small Business

Small Business Into Image — Courtesy of LinkedIn

Few days ago, a dear friend of mine asked me what does he need for his new small home professional production house. I took this opportunity to share with you how I will design his new IT infrastructure. The topic will be consists of a group of articles covers the updates in the project.

Production House X:

Information and requirement gathering is the first phase of planning for any new IT infrastructure. Each infrastructure is different that others. The difference between infrastructure designs are because factors such as total budget, maintenance requirements, future upgrade consideration, and the type of business.

Step 1: Do your homework

The first step into gather information and requirement is learning more about the field of the business. Since Production House X is a production house that produces high quality corporate videos for different customers. Thus, I have built in hypothesis that the PHX needs a sophisticated file sharing server. I presume that all their footage is large. As a result, high-speed network is a must.

Step 2: Meeting

Second step is having a meeting with the client to learn more about his requirements and about his/her business. Start your meeting by asking the client basic question about the field of the business, what is a daily routine of it and how is it going so far. It is important to ask these question, so you can break the ice between you and the client if you do not know the client in person. Also, these questions show that you as a consultant is interested about the business and the client at the same time.

Next, it is important to ask question about the management of the business. I mean ask questions about what of roles is in the business and how many employees is in the business as an example. It is important to know about the managerial process, because from a security point of view, it is important to hide data from unauthorized personnel even within the same business.

Finally, start to ask the technical questions such as what technology do you currently use, what are the issues the business are currently facing, and what type of data do your business generate. It is important to ask a lot about the type the data is generating daily, because data is the most critical asset of any business.

Server 101: Shapes of servers

April 15, 2017 Hemo Server 101

Servers come in different shapes. Today their shapes will be looked and discussed.

What shapes do you take Mr. Server??

Servers can take three main shapes: tower, blade and rack mount. Servers come in shapes for multiple reasons such as cost, power efficiency and noise.

Rack Mount:

Rack mounted shape is most conventional shape servers comes in and it allows data center technicians to stack 3-4 physical servers on top of each other in a server rack. It is more seen in the small to medium businesses that require multiple servers but no more than five. However, rack mounted servers are generally more expensive than other tower servers and it is noisier than tower ones.

Tower:

Tower shape is similar to desktop computer (Technically speaking our personal computers are not desktop computers, because desktop ones are the one that sit on top of desks like the old whitish ones). Small businesses tend to pick this shape over others, because it is more cost effective than others, especially if these businesses need one or two for all their operations. Thus, shape is recommended for them. Unlike most shapes, tower servers allow adding multiple regular 3.5 hard disk drives, that are more expensive. On the other side it takes more space than others.

Blade Servers:

A picture of a Blade Server — Courtesy of Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Blade shape or blade servers are a form factor developed by IBM to create modular and efficient design that allow them stack as much physical servers as possible within a single server rack. Each module is called a blade. Despite its modular and efficient design, blade servers has its share of cons. These servers need high RPM fans, as a result they are noisy. Also, due to its compact size, ability to add expansion card is limited. Third, it is more expensive than others, with the same hardware inside.

Hemo’s Take

Recently, other forms are seen in server room. In home server rooms, laptops are used for its size, price and usage of laptop battery as a ghetto USP. In addition to laptops, System on Chips such as Raspberry Pi is implemented.

Server 101: What is a server

April 8, 2017 Hemo Server 101

Tech workers spend most of their time either in server rooms or near them. However, not all of them know the ins and outs of server rooms. In this series server rooms will be discussed here. So, this topic will start with the most obvious question.

Group of server cabinets — Courtesy of ipzonecomputer

What is Server?

Many people think that servers are large, loud, expensive and hard to use machines. However, they thoughts are not true. The definition of server is any device that provide any type of services to other machines on the same network and other network, because the term server is assigned to machines based on its relation to a certain service.

As a result, we see different types of “Computers” act as a server. We started to see microcomputers such as Raspberry Pis, and atom based computers act as server for clients who are waaay more powerful, more expensive and more difficult to use computers.

Servers serve different types of services. These services varies from serving a group of files to a different to managing user authentication and logging, to managing prints over a network. According to the service provided, system administrator choose the type of hardware that will serve the purpose and consume the least amount of power.

Hemo’s Take

Do not look at servers are as magical, difficult, expensive machines that working on them are rocket science. They are just like the machines that we use at home, but with small differences. Dealing with servers are just a nice journey into getting better at your job.

In the end remember, we the tech workers are supermen who do not wear tight clothes 🙂