Protect you from YOU. Learn more about Contrast Security and get a free demo here: bit.ly/3PkJsRZ 👀 Sneak Peek into My Secret Server Room Project! 👀 For almost a year, I've been working on a special project: building a server room that's not just functional but also cinematic! Today, I'm giving you a behind-the-scenes tour of this dream setup, still a work in progress but already filled with so much potential. From racking my 45Drives servers to configuring an epic 10gig switch, there's a lot to cover. So let's dive right in! Get a server like me, checkout 45Drives: www.45drives.com/NetworkChuck

@contonium365

7 ай бұрын

ok how do you plan on using this? and does this have a power backup? or at-least enough of a backup to safely save and shutdown? Obv The 2 racks r linked but still.

@Bowswa

7 ай бұрын

Hey Chuck! My dad used to be REALLY good at this kinda thing, and he once used MikroTik to run a WHOLE corporate building, AND it was so redundant the entire network could run off of his phone for short term. And make sure you save the configs to backups somewhere, that way if one piece of your MikroTik tech dies, you just buy the part and import the config, not spending hours to re-set it up.

@BrennerEraFan

7 ай бұрын

The text messages made me laugh, Like do you really call your wife, "wi-fi" :) :)

@MatthewCiantar82

7 ай бұрын

Ideally you should enable the vlan filtering and define the vlans you want to use. This makes the trunks only use the defined vlans, but this would be a more secure configuration, avoid scenarios like vlan-hopping, or noise on the trunk which you don't expect.

@seankingsland

7 ай бұрын

Six Daughters. That's insane in 2023 Chuck!! Gratz man but seriously. How is your hair not grey? You are using the dye aren't you?

I heard 6 daughters and I honestly screamed out loud. The fact you can handle that and this channel, sir I love your work.

@tomlee6076

7 ай бұрын

why would you scream anyways?

@ytvandre

7 ай бұрын

It’s coffee power! ❤

@CodingHk

7 ай бұрын

But am seeing just three daughters😂🤣

@micweis

7 ай бұрын

That's how you know his coffee is quality 👌

@anne_price

7 ай бұрын

Was about to comment the same!!! 1 kid is already crazy, 6 AND a youtube channel is a crazy feat!!!

Wells now you're a Mikrotik man. A true #homelab aficionado!

@orfeous

7 ай бұрын

Once you go MikroTik you never go back :) But cant hurt to throw in a couple of Ciscos in those racks just for good measures ;)

@alikbh1

7 ай бұрын

hi Jeff, since networkchuck talked about the importance of documentation, and I think you have a good skill with that, any tips?

@Darkk6969

7 ай бұрын

Mikrotik fan here!! 😎

@techwithanirudh

7 ай бұрын

True.

@FKLinguista

7 ай бұрын

The Homelab Cinematic Universe (HCU) is expanding!

“So I bought a new house” lol

This is the very best channel for tech tutorials. i found this channel many years too late but i found it. everything about the way you make your videos is perfect. you speak fast, you don't waste time, you show what changes will have what effect. When you code you say the full name of abbreviations (CD=change directory) making it WAY easier to understand. Absolute gem of a channel. all that AND a father of 6! i now understand the inclusion of coffee at every step. i need to step up my coffee intake.

Great upgrade, especially the themed, glass server room! One more enterprisey upgrade you could do for the next go-around: split your "like items" across racks. This allows for better power and cooling distribution and limits your surface area for failures (assuming redundancy across routers, storage, etc).

So happy for you!! Always killing it with the content!

It's so sweet that his daughter is just sitting in the background being with papa chuck

For safety reasons i'd consider to bolt the rack to the ground. With the weight from the drives if you pull servers for maintenance you may have the risk to tilt the rack and fall into you. May be a remote possibility but better safe than sorry.

@ProbablyRicky

7 ай бұрын

I second this. I worked in data centers and would never risk it.

@mnadamn

7 ай бұрын

All I could think about while watching this is how high the center of gravity is...

@JaykPuten

7 ай бұрын

That's a very good point.. Everyone who's seen a non "bolted to ground" rack has thought the same, or heard the results... and no one wants to just burn that kinda cash

@Dycell

7 ай бұрын

I worked datacenters and I couldn’t agree more. Please bolt the rack up or use special balance plating. Especially with the kids around!

@swilsonsantos

7 ай бұрын

@@JaykPuten it’s a lot of money indeed, but nothing compared to physical damage of him or specially one of his girls that seems to be around him all the time

Hey Chuck , pretty cool that you cover MikroTik hardware and a bit of the configuration! Your videos are awesome and they always encourage me to work on my homelab again and try new things. To avoid possible frustration, I have a few tips for you: - activate Safemode in CLI with ctrl+x (in case you loose the connection or lock your self out, it reverts the last changes) - add the bridge interface itself to EVERY tagged vlan in bridge settings - if you don't want your switches to be transparent (for a management vlan for example) add a "vlan"-interface under "interfaces" with the given VLAN-ID, add an ip address to it, and add it to the tagged VLAN in the bridge settings also - make sure that "vlan filtering" in the bridge settings is turned on Maybe it helps with trouble shooting in case of a problem. Best wishes! 👋

Dude, I love your stuff and NOW you have a server room!!! wow, a little jealous and enjoying your journey!

Chuck you are an amazing guy and you have a beautiful family. Keep up the good work Chuck!

I always romanticised the idea of having a glass wall on the server rooms under my control. But when you realise that you suddenly need to have absolutely EVERYTHING looking 100% all of the time in order for it to actually be a flex, it adds a lot of extra anxieties and stresses to what would normally be an everyday operation. Install a new device? Gotta route those cables absolutely perfectly. Remove a device? Gotta find another RU blank immediately. And remove the cage nuts. Temporarily hosting or labbing something now has to be relegated to the back side of the rack, assuming you have the space. And you can't go in there for a rant session after a shit meeting without being totally visible to the outside world.

@Influence713

7 ай бұрын

I lived this for a little while in the early 2000's and I can say that all of your anxieties are more than correct. Consider the owner of the company coming by to inform you of every prospective customer visit when they invite and give a tour of the facility to win them over with all the state of the art things, including my fish bowl of a server room. Then there was that time my co-worker did a software install and deleted all the custom SQL templates for the end to end (Sales to product delivery and maintenance) software suite everyone in the company used. Try having that conversation completely under your breath while holding a smile. 2 1/2 days in that fish bowl in complete and consistent observation while the entire company twiddled their thumbs. Once we found the right tapes the restore took the latter part of those 2 days, and it was worse once that started because we got to sit there twiddling our thumbs waiting to be told the next tape was needed.

Microtik stuff is solid, I also got owned trying to config some of their equipment as I've only worked with Extreme and Ubiquiti. That being said, after fumbling on setting up it up, it was super solid and reliable. I'll definetly be purchsaing more mikrotik stuf in the future.

Good luck with the new servers!

Hey NetworkChuck, just wanted to drop by and express my immense gratitude for the amazing work you do! Your knack for making IT fascinating is truly impressive, and it's evident how much passion you have for the subject. Your content has been a game-changer for me in understanding complex tech concepts. Also, you come across as an awesome person, which makes learning from you even more enjoyable. Cheers to you and your incredible journey in making IT accessible and fun for all of us!

These Videos are always amazing. Thank you Chuck!

I have been learning a lot from you, since I started my CCNA learning here in Nigeria. I hope to be a successful engineer like you someday. After I finish self learning and getting enough funs to pay for my exams. Your videos has been helpful to me😊

Looks great Chuck! Can't wait to see more!

Love the Mikrotik content! This brand and the hardware doesn’t get enough attention. It’s kind of crazy what can be achieved with it once you get a hang of the setup.

Looking forward to seeing your finished office. Sweet!

man.. i just love what you do.. how you do it... and most importantly how you approach the explanation of thing... so satisfying

this channel is not boring to watch , this is my favorite channel in all IT tutorials. #1 fan in Ph

Incredible! What a great project! I love your work! You are very interactive and have great camera skills! How you can manage this channel, your kids and wife and of course your business is fantastic. Looking forward to the completion of your server room and your sanity LoL 😉Keep up the excellent work!👍🏻

Bro, 6 daughters, a wife, and a KZread Channel. Wish I could give you 8 likes. You my man deserve a medal!

I always thought you were in the basement!! 😊

Cool project, it´s great to see you beeing happy about your creation :D

Hi Chuck ! love your educational videos , your being so helpfull for my Cs lessons. wish you big achievements in future.

This is goals! Love the way the server room looks.

The easiest way to work with MT is remembering that most commands are the same as Linux networking. I dumped Ubiquiti a couple of years ago and went to MT, I never regretted it. Not to mention my hardware has handled all that I have thrown at it, including expanding the home to a lab environment with the typical home service.

Exactly the same happened to me last week kept redoing installing my rack for four times I feel you MAN. My hands hurts a lot.

Love what was hopefully the first video of your new servers. This video also made me realize I know nothing of networking lol. Or I'm just way out of practice and studying. Keep up the good work

I really like the mtik CCR and CRS's. The GUI and CLI are both really user frendly after you get started.

Incredible video! And it gave me a great idea: I'm going to build a new house for myself, and I was thinking about creating a small room for the servers, but now I'm going to do like you, I'm going to divide a part of the office with glass and put the servers there. Thanks for the idea!

6 daughters. holy geez. keep trying. you'll get it next time.

@Utsav_Viradiya

7 ай бұрын

They are seeking for a boy, I guess!

@Mdmeskywlkr007

6 ай бұрын

Or maybe just grateful for any child God blessed them with, regardless of gender...?

Super excited for you! Server room goals!

Everyone's first until they refresh the comment section😂

@diytech-developement

7 ай бұрын

😂

@nerajjha2875

7 ай бұрын

True

@matgaw123

7 ай бұрын

True

@benhogan86

7 ай бұрын

first

@matgaw123

7 ай бұрын

@@benhogan86 bruh

Love your works Sir, you are very Great teacher. Happy Teachers Day 🎉

Any one that's a Cisco Guy (like you and me) Mikrotik is a piece of cake.... Congratulations, I like all your videos amd learn a lot from them. Thanks for everything!!!

Congrats on the new house and server room

Network chuck you’re the best teacher in the world…I have no idea what you talked about but I feel I got closer to learning because you make hard subjects easier to digest

Chuck you're awesome man

The server skin looks so nice, love the dogs!

FYI, Ethernet is just a protocol, it can be used over sfp and fiber. Great work as always :)

Just bought an amazing dell EMC PowerEdge r730 $500 server and now you show me this! Love your approach and work that you do! Coffee break!

This is awesome! Keep up the great work Chuck.

Love the idea with the glass wall 😮

Chuck! My Man! You are the true incarnation of will-power.

The best! I love this kind of videos

We will definitely entrust our company in your hands, great work Chuck!

Love this video, and I would love to see more content like this. I'm missing one thing though: The thoughts behind each hardware decisions, like why go with 45 Drives when you can DIY, or why Mikrotik over something else. It's probably a minority that would like that, but I'm probably in that area. Good job as always :)

@mrmotofy

6 ай бұрын

Mikrotik because they have really good equipment for really good prices

Im really young ( really really) and i somehow understand almost everything, you explain this stuff so good!

Very good video, keep it up, Chuck. :)

I miss Datacenter sometimes. You really make me want to get back to it. Kudos to your new flex!

My deepest condolences for having six daughters. May your pain be eased, and may peace surround you as you go through this tough journey. You are in my thoughts and prayers. May you have the strength to get through it all.

@ezhilmuruganthevar6252

7 ай бұрын

It's a blessing boy!

Microtik is amazing! It's so flexible and the network stack underneath is just rock solid!

@BurkenProductions

7 ай бұрын

Probably just linux anyway so :)

@markarca6360

7 ай бұрын

​​@@BurkenProductionsYes it is based on Linux, and you can build an entire ISP out of it.

@seandean8293

7 ай бұрын

@@markarca6360I’ve been told it isn’t great at advanced BGP. As long as it’s a small ISP it’ll be fine

Wow 6 daughters,you are a busy man. Room looks alot cooler then Linus's. Sweet setup, I love this stuff and hope I can have something like this one day

@fightingfalconfan

7 ай бұрын

Looks cooler then Linus because unlike Linus who isn't a network engineer by trade Network chuck is. Linus knows a little bit about all things technology. He has Emily and Jake for the network stuff these days.

@dhillaz

7 ай бұрын

Chuck has more daughters than I have Docker containers

@its-nathan

7 ай бұрын

you said "hope I can have something like this one day" so are you talking about 6 daughters or a server room💀😅

@MrMeek79

7 ай бұрын

I have one daughter and shes is more then enough. I couldnt imagine having 6...so yeah,the server room lol@@its-nathan

@MrMeek79

7 ай бұрын

me too actually@@dhillaz

love the video! any chance you'll one day do some Mikrotik tutorials? loved the cisco series you did and i'd love see you teach mikrotik as well

@orfeous

7 ай бұрын

Best from two worlds! :) I love it too!

I have 128 GB of RAM in my personal desktop! XD I also run Linux, so I use less RAM than the average user.

@Darkk6969

7 ай бұрын

Same here. Debian 12 with KDE. 😁

@oglothenerd

7 ай бұрын

@@Darkk6969 Nice, I am EndeavourOS.

@PeterMountUK

7 ай бұрын

256GB on my desktop, HP Z820 with Ubuntu on it. Memory use is very low I even have a 50GB ram disk setup for when I need fast disk IO.

@oglothenerd

7 ай бұрын

@@PeterMountUK Lol, nice. My laptop has 64 GB of disk space, with 3 GB of RAM, with an Intel Celeron processor with EndeavourOS on it.

The bridge thing is actually quite common on enterprise Linux switches that are running Cumulus or SONiC for example. That's because a bridge **is** a switch. It's just the software equivalent. By creating a bridge within Linux it can then use that config and program the ASIC with that information. It makes total sense if you try using bridges in Linux.

@pirolas001

6 ай бұрын

Was looking exactly for this comment!

How did you plan out which servers go where on the rack? UPS on the bottom cause its heaviest... but how do you layout everything else?

once you said you had 6 daughters, your calm demeaner made so much sense. i always wondered how you were so zen-like, somebodys got uber dad experience!

Happy to see Mikrotik in your server rack ❤

That 10GB switch would be perfect for my lab. Thanks!

Working as a Data Center tech, cables are indeed a hard part, and yup servers are really heavy! Especially 4Us

One of the cool things about mikrotik is if you have any issues theyre more likely to help you than something like cisco. also their model numbers make each thing super easy to know what its capabilities are, like the CRS112-8G-4S-IN being a CRS (cloud router switch) with 8 gigabit ports, 4 sfp+ ports, and POE In, and nearly all their products are named like that, so you can know the capabilities of something just by its model name

@maxxwellwalt

6 ай бұрын

This is why I like the comment section.. Thank you.

Oh Chuck is moving to Mikrotik land, the land of do every single step yourself, the land of I didn't know that was a thing (Initially then you remember you may have read or heard about that in a book once), the land of enterprise features and power (Limitless POWER haha). I run a Mikrotik at home it takes 10 times longer configure to do anything but you also feel like you achieved something when it works :) Good luck my internet friend :).

around 1:40 I can relate when you said you kinda forgot how to build the rack build and the few other little oopsies. As a retired network administrator for a government agaency (I miss my job), I guess people would sometimes think I had a photographic memory, but I obviously knew more than the average person coming to computers, I am only human. We are only human. Technology changes so fast and sometimes we are doing one off stuff, until you need to do it again a year later. Good to hear you are human. You remind me of a younger version of me. You get way to excited with your computer projects, THAT IS ME! You are having way too much fun with your project, I am jealous. :)

@mrmotofy

6 ай бұрын

If it makes you feel any better your job doesn't miss you haha...they're like mark who

eh, this video seemed kind of unfinished in the end. But disregarding that, this video was really awesome! I loved that little sneak peak into your server room! Thank you for making videos :D

@FlorianZevedei

7 ай бұрын

Looks like a cliffhanger 😀, and Part 2 is comming ... *fingers crossed* as he said 😀

I just love his commentary, and jokes. Half the reason I watch his videos 😂

Ohh, some rack and stack, building it's my favorite! 🤩

Oh my goodness that switch is goofy, great video Chuck!!

While I had no clue what you were talking about, I found this video rather intersting. Looking forward to seeing how it develops. 🙂

that looks sweet chuck nice job

Awesome video, I love that you're just as susceptible to issues as I am. I've had the good fortune to be able to do all this in a professional setting and it's a lot of work. We had KVM from Raritan to setup as well since our setup was collocated, and side rack kvm controllable PDUs. The only issue I can see will be how much space you have behind your rack, in a raised floor data center the front of the rack is covered with cold air from the vented floor panels and the back is full of heat from the server exhausts. So you'd freeze in front and sweat in back, lol. I'd be interested in knowing how well your A/C set manages. FYI there are special devices that monitor the environment and will page you if your server room gets too hot. We had one and I had to go into work in the middle of the night one time because the A/C failed and the room was 90 degrees and drives in enclosures would be even hotter and likely to fail.

@Darkk6969

7 ай бұрын

Been there and done that over the years. I use the APC's environment monitoring to e-mail me the alerts if something should go wrong. I could use SMS but APC is terrible of constantly sending me alerts when it could have been 1 alert only vs an alert 15 every minutes by default. 😂

*makes note to upgrade switches from purple to white*

Happy to see a MikroTik!

Can you do a video of how you would document something? You mentioned it's really important

1:55 a whole terrabyte of drives! No way. That is so much space!

Yeah!! Once you guys finish You should say "Quick Everyone! To the IT layer!"

Servers are mounted from the bottom, not from the top, because the cabinet can tip over.

I think a lot of people would appreciate more content dedicated for Mikrotik

7 daughters!!! God bless Texas size houses. 🤠 We are planning our first!

Very nice! Looking good in there Chuck ;-)

Everything is good and nice content. Can you please give us a more detailed video ?

I took apart, moved and rebuilt an APC rack without instructions Chuck, think like the engineer you are!

ur the best, chuck!!!

damnn i love this kind of video. feeling excited

Chuck you are awsome i love you so much man!

Amazing stuff, really enjoyed this video. Out of interest, why did you place the servers so high up in the rack? Are you planning to fill the bottom half with UPS backups? 👀

Lately my favorite channel

Mikrotik has so many ways to do VLANs based on what hardware you're using to get the maximum performance. On my old router the switch chip had all the VLAN but my new one uses bridge VLAN to utulize hardware offloading

A big shoutout NetworkChuck from Kenya😇!!!

SIX?!? HOLY SHIT. props my dude... i thought 3 boys was challenging. RESPECT.

Your awesome bro hahaha love this video great job

Mikrotik is solid...I've been dabbling with the RouterOS since 2009.

dude. I FEEL THIS ON SO MANY LEVELS...

you got to make it pink. every tech youtuber (in Canada) has one

Love my open frame rack, I've 10 of those in 2 rooms, 4 used for old apple tech like imac g3 g4 mac mini g4 and intel, 3 for ham radio stuff, 3 for modern it tech (nas, dvr, nvr, printers, 3d printer and other security item), I've do just simple mods like put rivets in the hole for m5 screw, make holes from the side rail to interconnect 2 or more rack with (painted in black) wood panel and to make side wall finished in fake cherry wood... and check more times to avoid to invert front with rear (I've to admit i forgot/fail 3 times )... ps: open frame 42u with wheels are top for mantenance, can move aroun without problem. ciao!

Gift for this hard work men I learned python from you while I'm 13 U r the best of my dreams