Garage Lab

Over the last few years I have built up a lab in my garage which is primarily Cisco Kit used during studies for CCIE exams. It has allowed me build and test new solutions prior to role out.

Backbone kit

Cisco 1801 – (with PoE Module installed)
Cisco AIR-AP1231G-E-K9 (PoE powered)
Cisco 2821 – PVDM2-32 + VIC2-2FXO + VIC2-2BRI-NT/TE + VWIC-1MFT-E1 + NM-CUE
2 x 8 port APC MasterSwitch
(I can turn the power on or off to all the kit from the house)
2 x Cisco 7960’s + 1 x Cisco 7911

Current Cisco CCIE Voice 3.0 Blue Print Kit (IPExpert)

Cisco 2821 – NM-32A + 2 x VWIC-2MFT-T1 + VWIC-2MFT-E1 + VWIC-1MFT-E1 + PVDM2-16 (PSTN-WAN-TS)
Cisco 2811 – VWIC-2MFT-T1 + PVDM2-64 (HQ – NYC)
Cisco 3750-24P (HQ-SW)
Cisco 2811 – VWIC-2MFT-T1 + WIC-4ESW (BR1 – Boston)
Cisco 2811 – VWIC-2MFT-E1 + WIC-9ESW (BR2 – Spain)
Cisco WS-3560-24PS (PoE) (POD)
6 x Cisco 7960 Phones (mixed Skinny and SIP)
3 x Cisco 7962 Phones (mixed Skinny and SIP)

Generic Lab Kit

Cisco LS 1010 Lightstream
Cisco 3725 – 3 x WIC-1T + NM-1A-OC3MM= (MPLS Simulation – UK)
Cisco 3640 – NM-2FE2W + NM-4T + 2 x NM-1A-OC3MM= (MPLS Simulation – USA)
Cisco 6503E – SUP2/MFC2 + XS6608-T1 + WS-X6348-RJ-45 (PoE)
Cisco PIX 501

In addition to the Cisco hardware I have two servers and a MacPro:

FreeBSD (P4 2Gb RAM and 500Gb of Disk) – used as the design and test environment for our companies infrastructure. From here I can checkout operating system and server software upgrades. Penetration testing can be performed to confirm whether the solution will come up to speed prior to deployment at the companies NOC.

Generic 1U Server (Dual P4 4Gb RAM and 250Gb of Disk) – This box is now a scratch box which is used for testing services when hardware is needed for testing an O/S.  I have an Ubuntu build with VMWare Server 1 installed for virtualising where appropriate.

MacPro (Dual Quad Core 18Gb RAM and 2TB of Disk) – This is my main desktop box and runs VMWare Fusion and Parallels in addition to normal office and developement applications. It is stuffed with RAM so I can fire up multiple servers or workstations for testing and lab preparation. This is also where the servers from the CCIE Voice 3.0 Blueprint are run. I run all the main Unified Communcations 7.x servers on this box at the same time with no issues at all. That said if I’d been building the lab again now I would probably have not used MAC and gone with VMWare ESXi keeping the VM and the desktop environment separate.

(on the left hand side of the picture you can see my scuba diving gear box)