Slashdot Mirror

i wish they sold or someone sold the setup sans drives (or just the bare case)

TFA says the case is available from Protocase for $875 in single unit quantities.

A "pod" is just a standard x86 PC in this custom 4U case. Sure, it has a few specific extras, but all are standard, off-the-shelf hardware that you can easily buy. Appendix A in the Backblaze blog post gives every detail you need.

If you start with just 15 hard drives (for a total of 45TB), then the price would be about $3300. You probably only save about $500 by using an standard case, because a decent one with room for 15 or more drives will set you back at least $300.

http://www.protocase.com/

Pretty cool service (no, I'm no affiliated in any way)

From the credits list: "Protocase for putting up with hundreds of small 3-D case design tweaks", which I assume is http://www.protocase.com/.

Protocase is great if you need a custom chassis or even sheet metal panels.

http://www.protocase.com/

If you are in the market for a low cost custom chassis, these guys are great. They can handle quantities of 1-100. We have ordered a few items from them and the quality is great.

http://www.protocase.com/

What prototype do you have? I would always go to custom manufacturer as 'petard' has suggested above. Like, take help from http://protocase.com/, if you want custom metal case/s. Ask for questions you have through forums, friends, among others. Hold on, is it how do i turn concept to prototype? :-)

I was looking into something similar for a Soekris-based project recently. ProtoCase looks promising. I haven't actually placed my order, so I can't comment on quality just now. I did download their software and do a quick design to estimate costs. Looks like, for a typical soekris-sized project with a couple serial ports and a couple ethernet ports I'd be facing approx. $130/unit in very small quantities with about $70 in one-time setup fees.

These guys have also occasionally been recommended on soekris-tech, and also offer free software to help you design and submit projects to them.

Good luck!

http://www.protocase.com/Protocase has a very good service. I faxed them the design and after some communications i got the case in few days. It was wonderful and most, its my design. I bet custom manufacturer will go way ahead, among some of us.

After I submitted this article, I also discovered protocase which is specifically for equipment cases.. I haven't had a chance to play a lot with the software, but I do see ITX cases on their website.

SBC boards are hideously expensive. They're rated for industrial environments, specialty, low volume items with a lot of engineering in them.

Mini ITX is completely self contained, reasonably low power, and the big innovation was snap-on DCDC converters from a variety of companies. Mini-box.com is the only place I know offhand that sells them. There's a couple really slick models with compact flash drives, PCMCIA slots, dual ethernet boards.. and they're all under $200. Just add ram!

From my experience, they're also very rugged.

Great linux support too.

What more do you want?

My company makes a very small enclosure for these; there are lots of others out there as well. Once it's tucked away, you probably won't have to look at it again. That was the biggest problem I saw when specing these systems, so I turned it into an opportunity.

i guess they wont make it more smaller and again with breakable screen. how many people used that product? anyone here knows that stat. --------- design or built your our mini-itx http://mini-itx.com/ or your own custom enclosures http://protocase.com/

will it be good like the connection and the quality while using cordless. It seems that i have to buy the set again for the voip. let me try it once than i will know how it looks. but limiting it to Windows doesnt make me feel good though i guess they will built it sometimes later. -------- build your own project http://mini-itx.com/ or your own custom enclosures http://protocase.com/.

i would go with one of the custom enclosures manufacturers. there are plenty of them there in the market like this one http://www.protocase.com/. i have also seen plenty of project going on in http://mini-itx.com/. i have made some of the custom enclosures. ...

what about doing it yourself? build your own system, mini-ITX http://www.mini-itx.com/, use your own custom enclosures http://www.protocase.com/, what else, ... for silence http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/mega-itx/, plus the harware from ebay http://ebay.com/ will do fine.

I'd go completely rack mount, and plan on having a pile of systems. This solves the messy multiboot issue. At the minimum, I'd have a high end windows system and a linux system. If price were no object, I'd put in a seperate system just for gaming on a KVM but use X11 or Remote Desktop for the other systems on the three monitors.

Racks let you isolate for sound, too, something that annoys me more in my old age.

I'd add a seperate stand to add at least one notebook, probably a powerbook. This lets you be mobile and adds a forth monitor that's independant from all the other ones - handy for IM windows and quick checks, and the like.

For what it's worth - I'm currently working on developing my own custom rackmount setup along these lines with a company that does custom rackmount enclosres. Disclaimer: I get discounts for help with product development.

I'd go all DVI on the monitors for clarity. I've tested 15 foot copper DVI cables and had no problems; they're available in runs up to 50 feet.

I hate having five computers all in mismatched setups.. a gleaming rack with blinkenlights oozes geek. :)