home server rack - quiet options

[Karanbir Singh]

hi Guys,

I have now been living ( and surviving .. ) for 3 months with only my
laptop inside the house. All the desktop / server machines have been
sitting in the garage. An experiment to see if I could get by with just
machines in the DC and whatever I could do on the laptop. Its worked
well ( the laptop is an i5/8gb ram/ssd ).

But now I miss my home lab, and want to bring it back to life. Thats 4
Desktop tower box's and 5 rack servers. The rack these machines were in,
sadly didnt survive the home move last year.

So, given a very limited budget - what would everyone recommend in terms
of 'storage' to park these machines, in the garage. Just getting an ikea
bookshelf and stacking stuff up seems quite enticing.

I have enough power in there, and I have a WiFi/Enet bridge, so power +
network should be a solved issue already.

[John Hearns]

Karanbir,
take a look at catering shops and the wire racking they sell.

There was also some webpage I saw abotu an Ikea table which happens to
have an exactly 19inch spacing - I forget the model.

Post by Karanbir Singh
hi Guys,
I have now been living ( and surviving .. ) for 3 months with only my
laptop inside the house. All the desktop / server machines have been
sitting in the garage. An experiment to see if I could get by with just
machines in the DC and whatever I could do on the laptop. Its worked
well ( the laptop is an i5/8gb ram/ssd ).
But now I miss my home lab, and want to bring it back to life. Thats 4
Desktop tower box's and 5 rack servers. The rack these machines were in,
sadly didnt survive the home move last year.
So, given a very limited budget - what would everyone recommend in terms
of 'storage' to park these machines, in the garage. Just getting an ikea
bookshelf and stacking stuff up seems quite enticing.
I have enough power in there, and I have a WiFi/Enet bridge, so power +
network should be a solved issue already.
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[John Hearns]

LackRack http://wiki.eth-0.nl/index.php/LackRack

Googling for Ikea and 19 inch brings up other suggestions.

Post by John Hearns
Karanbir,
take a look at catering shops and the wire racking they sell.
There was also some webpage I saw abotu an Ikea table which happens to
have an exactly 19inch spacing - I forget the model.

Post by Karanbir Singh
hi Guys,
I have now been living ( and surviving .. ) for 3 months with only my
laptop inside the house. All the desktop / server machines have been
sitting in the garage. An experiment to see if I could get by with just
machines in the DC and whatever I could do on the laptop. Its worked
well ( the laptop is an i5/8gb ram/ssd ).
But now I miss my home lab, and want to bring it back to life. Thats 4
Desktop tower box's and 5 rack servers. The rack these machines were in,
sadly didnt survive the home move last year.
So, given a very limited budget - what would everyone recommend in terms
of 'storage' to park these machines, in the garage. Just getting an ikea
bookshelf and stacking stuff up seems quite enticing.
I have enough power in there, and I have a WiFi/Enet bridge, so power +
network should be a solved issue already.
--
Karanbir Singh
[phone] | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh
ICQ: 2522219 | Yahoo IM: z00dax | Gtalk: z00dax
GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc
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[Karanbir Singh]

Post by John Hearns
LackRack http://wiki.eth-0.nl/index.php/LackRack
Googling for Ikea and 19 inch brings up other suggestions.

this is fantastic! thanks.

[tid]

On 16 February 2012 18:23, Karanbir Singh <mail-***@karan.org> wrote:

If you're looking for a DIY solution, Dexion has worked for a friend.
It's pretty cheap on ebay / liquidation sites
and is great for odd setups. He has a curious mixture of servers and
AV kit and swears it's more configurable
than any rack he's worked with.

Tid.
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[Khusro Jaleel]

Post by Karanbir Singh

Post by John Hearns
LackRack http://wiki.eth-0.nl/index.php/LackRack
Googling for Ikea and 19 inch brings up other suggestions.

this is fantastic! thanks.

+1. Looks like a great idea!
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[Nix]

Post by Khusro Jaleel

Post by Karanbir Singh

Post by John Hearns
LackRack http://wiki.eth-0.nl/index.php/LackRack
Googling for Ikea and 19 inch brings up other suggestions.

this is fantastic! thanks.

+1. Looks like a great idea!

"Simultaneously insane, wonderful, and terrifying" you mean. Given how
noisy most rack-mountable gear is, I imagine this solution is restricted
purely to the deaf and the soon-to-be-deaf (unless you plan to leave the
ikearacks in the garage and tell all your neighbours that you're running
a fleet of cars in there 24/7 with the garage door closed).

[John Edwards]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 10:10:48PM +0000, Nix wrote:
<snip>

Post by Nix
"Simultaneously insane, wonderful, and terrifying" you mean. Given how
noisy most rack-mountable gear is, I imagine this solution is restricted
purely to the deaf and the soon-to-be-deaf (unless you plan to leave the
ikearacks in the garage and tell all your neighbours that you're running
a fleet of cars in there 24/7 with the garage door closed).

Not all rack mount gear is noisy, you just need to be careful about
what you buy.

Also the music and events industry were using 19" racks before
computers were, often in flight cases and on wheels. There is a
company called Canford that do a great range of 19" rack kit,
including fridges and wine racks:
http://www.canford.co.uk/Products/20796/13-024_CANFORD-FRIDGE-Rackmount-13U
http://www.canford.co.uk/Products/11-231_CANFORD-RACKWINE-Winerack-rack-mount-3U-black

[John Hearns]

John, the 19 inch rack standard predates the audio industry of course!

AFAIK (and without Googling) it is the standard for telephone relay racks.
I would guess that Colossus itself was built on 19in racks - given
that Tommy Flowers was an engineer from the Post Office at Dollis
Hill.

I too have always wanted a Canford wine rack.

Post by John Edwards
<snip>

Post by Nix
"Simultaneously insane, wonderful, and terrifying" you mean. Given how
noisy most rack-mountable gear is, I imagine this solution is restricted
purely to the deaf and the soon-to-be-deaf (unless you plan to leave the
ikearacks in the garage and tell all your neighbours that you're running
a fleet of cars in there 24/7 with the garage door closed).

Not all rack mount gear is noisy, you just need to be careful about
what you buy.
Also the music and events industry were using 19" racks before
computers were, often in flight cases and on wheels. There is a
company called Canford that do a great range of 19" rack kit,
http://www.canford.co.uk/Products/20796/13-024_CANFORD-FRIDGE-Rackmount-13U
http://www.canford.co.uk/Products/11-231_CANFORD-RACKWINE-Winerack-rack-mount-3U-black
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[Gerd Busker]

Post by John Hearns
I too have always wanted a Canford wine rack.

Now you've given me an idea what to do with this spare rack in the
garage ....

Gerd.
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[Karanbir Singh]

Post by Nix
"Simultaneously insane, wonderful, and terrifying" you mean. Given how
noisy most rack-mountable gear is, I imagine this solution is restricted
purely to the deaf and the soon-to-be-deaf (unless you plan to leave the
ikearacks in the garage and tell all your neighbours that you're running
a fleet of cars in there 24/7 with the garage door closed).

I'm in a slightly lucky situation - the garage is on the ground floor of
the house, and has a common wall with the neighbours garage. I've got 7
machines running in there, the loudest one is an old old Sun v20z and
noone can hear it in our house or the neighbours place. Otoh, temp has
been fairly low since I put these in, as summer comes in I suspect it
wont be that quiet.

[Andy Millar]

I'm in a slightly lucky situation - the garage is on the ground floor of the
house, and has a common wall with the neighbours garage. I've got 7
machines running in there, the loudest one is an old old Sun v20z and noone
can hear it in our house or the neighbours place. Otoh, temp has been fairly
low since I put these in, as summer comes in I suspect it wont be that quiet.

As long as you avoid 1U servers you should be relatively OK.

Larger servers, bigger fans, lower RPM, less noise.

Andy
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