Doesn’t look pretty but I now have both!of the XCP-ng servers I built, fine tuned and stress tested in my rack. I’ll post specs later. Now my C7000 is retired I just have to clean it up and find it a new home!
I had to enlarge one hole in one of my rails attached to my 4U server case and move my rails down an inch. Physically besides connecting the networking that was the only hiccup. Now my hallway is empty and its time for cleanup. This will now give me back my work space for testing and building new equipment.
The servers are still a bit noisy as I went with the high end 8k rpm fans even though I have active heat sinks with fans. I’ll explore more liquid cooling but its a lot more work with server class CPUs. A bit more work than I set out to do with all of the updates but saves me time and gives my weekends more time for other things I’m hoping. Would have completed this earlier this week but I was really ill, still feel something and have to visit the doctor tomorrow so will see.
I officially removed my Bl460 HP Gen 8 Blades from being XCP-ng servers in my pool as well. They did a great job but I can already tell these new servers are much faster!
Made sure my Xcp-ng were at the latest patch revisions for XCP-ng 8.3 plus updated my community XO version via git. Then updated my web server, music relay server for IceCast and ShoutCast and music server. Had to swap my VMs between virtual servers as some patches required a reboot. Reminded me why I wanted more memory before this AI trend of gobbling up the computer chips.
I obviously need do cable management, I will rack my switches in a new manner plus a host of other things like a custom built open source router rebuild. I needed to reboot my router I was using for NAT forwarding.
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
The UPS equipment (Leibert UPStation GTXs) is back in the rack tonight. I placed each UPS battery cluster on separate racks this time so that battery replacement is easier for the extra battery pack on top of the main assembly.
Finding my racking hardware screws, bolts etc has been most of my time. I found the rails I will use for the virtualization servers as well but will not rack those tonight.
Front viewSide view of racking shelves and UPS equipment.Back side view of UPS equipment.
After performing a successful clone using Clonezilla of my physical BL460 Gen7 blade that was my W2019 Data Center server with Sam Broadcaster that served as my music server, it was time to move my C7000 blade chassis out of my rack and power it down. I’ll have more on my P2V clone to XCP-ng as a VM in another post I already have drafted.
I am already up on my new XCP-ng virtualization servers and have been on it for a while now. They are hanging out in my hallway and need to come into the rack. There was no space for the new servers in the rack with the C7000 chassis and my UPS equipment.
The UPS equipment was sitting right on top of my C7000 chassis as its sole support. The UPS are also plugged into my 2 NAS (TrueNAS custom) systems, plus I wanted to make sure that I had my cabling connected properly if I needed to power my C7000 blade server for anything again after moving out of the rack.
With the C700 powered down, I started with my top UPS cluster and moved the connections to the other UPS clusters. Then moved the UPS to a furniture dolly to the side of the rack, moved the power connections back to the UPS cluster on the furniture dolly. I repeated this with my next two UPS clusters, stacking them on top of each other. Since my NAS systems are dual homed with power, they had no issues along with my switches. My consumer level routers did end up going down however (I plan on replacing the consumer routers with OpenSense custom build soon). I had to reboot my router on my main domain but besides that everything was smooth.
Next, how to move the C7000 out of the rack and be able to properly connect it back. As you can see, my wire management is not good. What I decided to do was not disconnect the networking cables from the C7000. I traced the networking cables back to their respective switches, disconnected them at the switches, ran them through the back of the rack on top of the C7000 chassis, back to the switches via the front of the rack so that when I pull the chassis out the cables are coming through the rack front with the chassis connected to the switches which are in front of the rack. This way I was able to keep the cables connected where they were in the chassis back to the proper switch. It was easier to determine which switch the cable went to than which module\port in the back of the chassis.
Then as you can see below, I pulled the C7000 chassis out after disconnecting the power on to another furniture dolly I had and placed it on the other side of the rack. I can now power the C7000 chassis and blades up if I need to for any reason with the proper networking. The power consumption and heat even with the C7000 blade system just idling while plugged in and all the blades down is a bit of a load. My UPS equipment is barely registering anything with the C7000 chassis not plugged into power!
Next steps will be placing my UPS equipment at the bottom of the rack and then placing my newly built XCP-ng hypervisor servers into the racks, then properly attach all my networking equipment within the rack. I will do better with cable management as well.
I have to say the physical part of vacating the C7000 went smoother than I thought it would with my plan to systematically move the UPS clusters one at a time. Routing the networking cables through the back of the rack keeping them plugged into the chassis was the big key.
How it was before moving C7000.UPS moved out with systems still up.Back of C7000.C7000 partially out of the rack onto the furniture dolly.C7000 and UPS equipment out of the rack finally.C7000 and UPS equipment out of the rack finally, another view.
The garden is producing regularly now and I’m using vegetables and herbs a lot more so in my everyday meals. I want to show the produce and meals of why this is a special time of the year for me when the garden kicks in!
My squash is just going like crazy so I had to get an additional recipe for that like zucchini bread. The tomatoes I just love so want to incorporate them as much as possible.
The past couple of years I have discovered I really like tomatillos. Swiss chard is my go to green leafy vegetable that grows year round.
Fell in love with tarragon a few years back, a few leaves go a long way and leave a slightly sweet pleasant aroma in the house similar to their taste.
Proud of how I handled a spare rib as well cutting off the flap for rib tips making it a St Louis cut. Made some bbq sauce and that complimented my garden veggies.
Using your garden for your meals is awesome and delicious. Just wanted to share with anyone who comes across this post.
Using Swiss chard, cherry tomatoes, sweet and purple basil on hamburger and with bratwurst cooked on my new Weber natural gas grill I had just put together.Using Tarragon, basil, cherry tomatoes, chives, in my breakfast omelette.Purple basil, cherry tomatoes, Serrano peppers with, my hamburger, thin chicken breast fillets and bratwurst.Squash zucchini bread, to have with, ribs and rib tips with vegetable medley of , zucchini, cherry and pear tomatoes, green beans, tomatillo, thyme, tarragon, rosemary from the garden along with an onion from the store.
Went to the HPE Discovery trip in Las Vegas for 2026 and as with all conferences had unique experiences outside of the sessions as well.
World first super computer from Cray on display taken out of the museum and present at the conference.Cooling for current generation of super computer.Current super computer millions of compute more powerful than the original Cray computer.F1 formula one car.Astrolab lunar module.Air cooled rack
Pulled weeds in vegetable and flower gardens, trimmed bushes can plus did some extra work on the pool.
Got a lot done in the yard before the weeds could take hold with the veggies starting to hit growth spurts. The flowers in the front are not as nice looking as they were last year this time but getting there. The bushes and tree near the driveway needed trimming.
All the new soil and work in the backyard led to more dirt in the pool. The pool pump issues meant I got a late start on the pool but it’s looking good with the hot weather coming up!
Updated my dhoytt.com ssl certificate as I do annually about now. I also updated the certs on my music relay servers so they can be played secureld on your players or from the site at https://dhoytt.com/snake-ice-radio-blog/now-playing/ . I have much more going on due to some power issues and updating my entire infrastructure I will detail later.
