 So I've done plenty of videos on how we've built networks for other people, but a few people after seeing my office tour said How'd you build the network for your office? So I'm putting this together for you Starting at the server rack here. So at the very top, we got a couple TP link gigabit switches I bought them because they were on sale. They're thorough put and performance off I'm actually compared them to some of the higher end switches we put at clients Marginal like very small differences in speed nothing we can really notice So I went and picked those now there's two of them because The top one is our server side network and the bottom one is more the client side network We keep everything segmented so the servers are on one side and the clients on the other now Then we have our patch panel here now because this is not the only piece of our network There's not too much stuff plugged in back here All the servers are plugged in back here and a couple runs that go through the back of the building We went ahead and put back here for distance the majority of them I'm going to show you are in the rack that's up front and we'll cover that in a minute so all this is set up in a Telco rack that I acquired. I don't know maybe 15 years ago. It's a really nice looking telco rack I do like it. It's got these cool things and the elder stickers and stuff on it It's it's pretty cool. We put some lights in it because you know makes it go faster something like that But it worked. It's been working really well for us. It's really really well built. This is not flexible This thing doesn't teeter-totter around at all. I mean it is extra solid and probably weighs I'm guessing in the neighborhood of 250 300 pounds empty But it works really well. Like I said, I acquired it from a telco that went out of business They had all these cool looking racks Then we have a couple shelves in here for things like the monitor We have one hard drive that is for a backup for one Windows server. That's not mine No actual Windows servers in my rack other than when we host for a client to keep some other stuff here That's the backup system for it all the other backups that we have our synced off site I'm gonna do a separate video of kind of our software stack and how I'm doing all the backups for that then we have our pfSense box, which is the next one down and Got a cool stickers on it. It's maybe a little overbuilt I had the case and we put in, you know, this big 4u case It's really not necessary for it because it only has one SSD in it and a standard motherboard Nothing real exciting in there and a standard Intel 4 port network card to segment out the networks The pfSense because we're not even using VLANs. I mean could but all this is set up with direct hardware. So Direct physical network. So the network segmentation up there is one wires going up to one switch one wires So they're physically separate networks There's not any way to escape a VLAN because there's physically separate and then a pfSense controls the routing for it Which it controls the routing also because for the different networks There's a couple pinholes based on IP addresses that allow access to the servers and then you hit the server access list Now all the servers once again, there's two network cards in the server stack This is our virtualization system And we're using virtual box running on top of Debian and it handles all the virtual machines And this is on a radar a we put together using SSD So it boots up and is ready to go in a matter of seconds and because Debian and they're all headless It doesn't take long for the entire stack to start up So in an event of a power failure this boots up like immediately within a couple of minutes. It's everything's back up and running Then the bottom one is our free NAS box and it has several terabytes of storage and it's got segmented storage as well One side backs up my business documents and more critical stuff And especially like all my videos and everything are actually real-time synced So instead of even putting a radar a in my computer I'm using sync thing to send everything over here But then all the business documents are also synced over here over sync thing and then roll over Offsite to another location for backups and all that's done with GP GG GP GG GP GG encryption, I don't know how I'm trying to say in that And so all the data at rest is of course encrypted that way even though it's on a crypto perdition and sync thing is got It's own access list rules and encryption. We also have the backups that are being done hourly off of the server Encrypted before they're sent over there So all the database and critical files that we create through our wiki system and through our point sales system CRM system that we design the database backs up every hour From 9 a.m. Until 7 p.m. And then it does back up again starting the next morning So we're only backing up probably during our business hours and but every hour there's a backup made So we can actually do rollback snapshots and honestly databases compressed really well So they're not very big. So it's not a big storage burden and then after so many days we're purging on right now It's 30. I could set it to more if I wanted to with 30 seems adequate for now At the very bottom of this I got a couple things sitting on top of it So it's a little harder to see and it's because we didn't know where to put the extra act I got a little USB keyboard in case I have to plug anything in I just keep it handy at the bottom There's an extra tray just didn't know where to put it So we left it there we were not using it at one time We were when we had some other stuff set on it, and then it's covering up a These are 2700 watt the model numbers missing because I got a really good deal on a new ups That was missing a faceplate and so why not use it? It's nothing wrong with it It was actually still new it was like a damaged one and we got it through a vendor We knew he's like hey, I got a really great deal on this it's new but the faceplate got destroyed So I don't remember the model number on it, but I know the models on the batteries But I'm not pulling those out right now to show that It was some type of a Dell branded APC. I think is what it is But that's pretty much how the rack looks on here. It's pretty straightforward pretty simple But we keep the wiring clean it makes it really easy to manage I guess I can give you a peek real quick around the back here So in the back here this kind of comes down. We had more of this orange con do it It keeps all the wiring nice and clean when it comes to the rack Con cast left a lot of slack with the cable one and they have so that comes through with I've twisted around it's not too ugly, but this keeps this looking nice This rack has velcro straps all along the side here, which allows us to Keep all of these nice and tight and everything goes down in a nice and neat manner At the top of the rack. You see we got our power switches We coiled everything up to each of the switches in there And then it runs all the way down to the ups down at the bottom and you know Just for keeps any type of issues at bay All of this side is network cable and then all of this side is wiring So any power cords go on this side of the rack and network cabling on this side Up and down to keep everything nice and neat and the power away from the rack Not likely that there's much interference, but you know I just keep it all separate makes my life easier And you can see when we do the punch downs I know it's a little hard to see with the lighting, but they're all clean And we try to keep it clean at the back and then put all the different labels the this burning free bsd This is how it labels the network adapters The pfSense box so they're labeled exactly like that makes it easy so I know exactly where I'm plugging into And our power is installed with a 25 amp circuit with a twist lock so you can't pull this out So you're not worried about the you know it falling out or anything It's like they go in and you go in and give it a twist and pull it in and out on here So keeps that nice and solid. We have the concast mounted to the wall here before the loop goes back up and around So here's the rack at the front of the store and once again, we have so many punch downs at the front This is where the majority of the work is for the network. So we have another tp link down to all two the same ones again The gigabit tp links and here's our up links that are from there one goes to this one one goes to the bottom one goes to the top From the back and we could have run it in here and run it out But you figure hey, why not have two feet to the source because well, it's not that far of walking into the building Then we have a rainbow of colors They chose to use usually we use one solid color, but we said why not make it a rainbow The tricky part is we had this up here had this down here These are kind of these are the ones we had we could custom cut them Maybe we'll later So they exactly fit but with the tp link all the ports are here and with the 48 port They're all the way across so we kind of have this little I don't know looks kind of messy, but it's how we left it now as we had work to do and You know people who are paying us when you're not getting paid to do the work Sometimes to do a little bit different. I mean it's still clean. It's still organized, but it's not as perfection It is when we're being paid to do the work So we do it like this but that's kind of the summary of the network All these are labeled so all the different ports here are labeled across the store And all the groupings are together of them. So it's really easy to find anyone of mine here We have some unify equipment. So here are the Unify power bricks. We just set them down here in the bottom and plugged them in line Where they go. We have them labeled for the web here. So that's the powers like the unified cameras and the unified Waps that we have installed in here. So just kind of a that's a quick overview of how the network works It's pretty straightforward pretty simple. We did make it look nice by putting everything in this conduit and kind of hiding things It does make it look really cool and that goes, you know all the way down the benches and everything else So instead of having this on here now the reason we just didn't fish it in the wall This isn't wall with a fire stop in it. There's no way to go down this wall and in so we actually go down And under and I should give you a quick look at that So each of these that you see on the wall here Are wired from under here So the wiring comes from underneath. We've got it all hidden in this and goes up and the way they brought it up Was we actually drilled the holes here in the two by four goes through the two by four and up And then each one of them comes around And that goes to the other parts of the benches So keeps all the wiring nice and neat Uh, there's not much hanging down here But like I said, we couldn't come from above so we come from below and then go up To fish each of these and each of these are labeled corresponding, you know, like normal you do corresponding to the ports on there, so That was it. That's kind of our Rack tour basic network setup tour some of the physical stuff if you have any other questions comment reply We are going to I'll do another video made if I have time today Of how we have everything set up in terms of the software stack that we use and everything that actually runs the rack And some of the procedures we're using to set that up. Thanks for watching. If you like to content here like and subscribe