The new rack is installed!

You know I must be a major geek when I get excited about a new server rack. But here it is. Isn't it a beauty? It's the empty black one on the left - an APC Netshelter. As you can see our old rack was not a standard size rack. The new rack is taller and deeper. The server, external storage enclosure, UPS and auxiliary battery unit are all in boxes in the server room today ready to be installed tomorrow. We have a new HP TFT7600 slide-out rack mount keyboard & monitor to take the place of the old desktop units that look so out of place in the old rack.

That's an Avocent 8-port KVM switch under the three HP Proliant servers in the old rack. We will continue to use it on the old rack since six servers are still on that side. You may be wondering what that aluminum duct is behind the new rack. We have an auxiliary portable air conditioner to help the underpowered wall unit we put in the server room last year. The wall unit was a disappointment. It was supposed to replace the portable AC but never did put out the advertised BTUs so we continued to use them both.

The old SQL server is the top unit in the old rack. It is an HP Proliant DL380 G3 - Dual Xeon 3.1Ghz processors, 1GB memory, 256GB RAID 5 storage. It is the most overloaded server I have ever worked with. I would never load it up this way. It was set up before I came on board. Not only is it running SQL Server 2000, it is also our master domain controller for Active Directory as well as our file and print server, DNS and WINS. It is an Application Server hosting our accounting system, our payroll system and our backup system - Symantec Backup Exec 11d with the LTO 3 tape attached. It runs our internet tracking database (yes, we automatically track everywhere our employees go) and our Jetnet database of available aircraft for sale.

I have tried to reduce the load by offloading DHCP, RRAS, SMTP Gateway, Anti-Virus and lots of other applications to other servers over the years. Talk about single point of failure. I wonder if my predecessor really understood how severs should be setup. Either he thought one server could handle everything or maybe he just didn't know how to get additional servers funded. This is the third new server I have added in the last two years. Next year I hope to put in new server hardware to support Exchange Server 2007.