My New Rack

[Cobrajr122]

So me and a friend have had a bunch of servers sitting on his floor for months now. Living NB, its hard to come by used server stuff. But luckily, last week, we found somebody selling a Dell 42U Rack for cheap. After spending 2 hours moving it from Fredericton to my friends place, then navigating his house to the basement, we got to work filling it up.







Now we just need to get the money to buy a mounted LCD + keyboard so we can free up the space for another 6 to 9 u's of servers that we are getting :)
Then we need to fill up those raid arrays.....only need a few more SCSIs. Too bad they are so damn expensive.

We also need an electrician to drop some 30 amp lines in so we can run more than 1800 watts. Only running 2 servers, a NAS, switch and KVM for right now.

[Toyoracer]

Now that is hawt. Need casters or is that it's new home? Now just to sleeve those cables

[Rison]

need some cable management items.. so you can run your cables neater. A few 7' PDU's, or 19" wouldn't hurt.

Personally, i'd just throw in a cheap LCD panel with a keyboard/mouse on a tray.. I wouldn't bother with an "expensive" pullout model. Definately get rid of the CRT in the cabinet, lol.. having that big of a magnet in it, is not cool.

What do you use the servers for? - and yeah, 30A twistlocks would be nice.

edit: oh and grab some velcro ties instead of zip ties - it's easier on the cables (prevents over tightening) and easier to re-cable when you add/remove stuff.

[ADay2Long]

Title is so misleading .... what if you were a girl .... ?!

In all seriousness, nice work! But why would someone need that much hardware for something they run at home?

[Cobrajr122]

Originally Posted by Toyoracer

Need casters or is that it's new home?

Its already on em

Originally Posted by Rison

need some cable management items.. so you can run your cables neater.
edit: oh and grab some velcro ties instead of zip ties - it's easier on the cables (prevents over tightening) and easier to re-cable when you add/remove stuff.

Since we ended up doing this sooner then expected, we did not have the Velcro bought yet, it will all be replaced in the next weeks.

Originally Posted by Rison

A few 7' PDU's, or 19" wouldn't hurt.

Personally, i'd just throw in a cheap LCD panel with a keyboard/mouse on a tray.. I wouldn't bother with an "expensive" pullout model. Definately get rid of the CRT in the cabinet, lol.. having that big of a magnet in it, is not cool.

We have 4 PDUs, but have to wait for the 30Amp lines so we can plug in the UPS and thus plug in the PDUs.

The only way we can just use a normal monitor is to run it outside of the rack as we will be filling the remaining 10 Us with 6 to 9 Us of more servers, would be nice to just find a 1U LCD Used for cheap like we have found everything else. We are either going to go that option, or go with an Ethernet KVM link back to a desktop. Both are equally expensive

So far everything has been relatively cheap compared to prices we are finding for used stuff west of here, its just hard to find

Originally Posted by Rison

What do you use the servers for?

Originally Posted by ADay2Long

But why would someone need that much hardware for something they run at home?

We are going to be making 3 clusters to run some web hosting for local business and local storage/ backups.

No better way to test servers and software then to do it on a full scale.

Over the winter we will be clearing out that room, and if we can find another rack, it will be going down there too.

Thanks guys!

[_dangtx_]

nice. whats powering all that again? :)

[Rison]

um, the reason I laughed at the CRT in the cabinet is because theres a degaussing magnet in it (all CRTs have this).. magnets and hard drives do not mix well together. I'd remove it from the cabinet.

If I were in a debating mood (which I'm not) i'd probably wager your spending way more money on electricity to fully power all those units (when its setup) with added network costs (two commercial lines from different companies, right?!) versus purchasing a VPS package. I've done load balanced webhosting before.. far too expensive to do, with all the administration and power bills / internet bills versus having a professional company host.
But yeah, it's fun to have your own rack I guess. I work on rack equipment + NOCs for a living, so the fun factor died years ago.