Slashdot Mirror
Building Custom Rackmount Systems?
Jobe_br asks: "I've spent the past few days scouring the web, trying to put together a custom 1U system that I don't want to cost a lot (starting out), but that should be quite expandable. The 1U system I've looked at and would most like to emulate is the 1U dual processor AMD system from Einux. I've looked around and can't seem to even get close to what they're able to pack into this 1U system. My price point goal is $700 for the base system (1 Athlon MP 1GHz or more, 128MB DDR SDRAM, 1 10/100 NIC, 1 3.5" IDE drive 10G or more) and I'd like the system to be able to handle another Athlon MP, at least 1GB DDR SDRAM, up to 4 10/100 network ports, and at least 2 3.5" IDE drives. As more hardware becomes necessary, price won't be an issue, but initially, I need to stay within $700! Does the custom building Slashdot crowd have any advice?"
For a 1U chassis, you're really restricted in your options. You may be able to fit a single PCI add-on card in somehow (IIRC, there are 90-degree adapters for PCI risers, half inch and 1 inch heights) Everything else would have to be integrated on the motherboard. The Tyan Athlon-MP motherboard offers two 100-Base-TX Ethernet ports, built-in 8MB AGP 3D video, SCSI and IDE, several GB of ram in slanted slots, 8 fan headers, and 64-bit PCI slots. You'd probably be able to use one of them with a 90-degree riser.
Other than that, you're pretty much out of luck. A 2U isn't that much bigger, and you can fit a lot more into it.
You can buy 1U rackmount chassis at General Technics. I'd suggest just buying the chassis from them, and going elsewhere for motherboard, RAM, disk, etc. They appear to be a little pricey on those. Even at $250 for the case (w/ 200W PS) you should easily be able to put together your base system. It takes standard ATX mobo's, just make sure you get low profile RAM and CPU fan(s).
Also, most 1U systems are limited to a single PCI card, but Intel has a 4-port PCI ethernet adapter that would work well for expansion. Don't have a link handy, but you should be able to google it easily enough.
Buy a used Rackable on eBay. When you're ready to expand, you can put another one in the same 1U of space (on the other side of the cabinet). These are the systems that Google and Yahoo use for their server farms.
www.rackable.com
Get a job. Seriously. That is a very tall order.
Rack stuff is generally quite expensive, and you'd have to spend almost your price point just to get that in a big box, let alone in a 1U chassis with somehow fitting 4 NICs in it.
Unless you can lay out and verify your own circuit boards for free to cope with the form factor, you're not going to get anything close to that for that price.
.. because heat can be a problem especially because you're going for Athlons. I recently built a dual P3 933MHz with a Tyan Tiger 200 motherboard in this case, and I had my processors overheat in the datacenter because there was not enough air flow. It was the ISPs fault, but that's whole other story.
I'm sure the Einux does test for heat judging from the non-standard layout of their chassis. Look at all those fans beside the CPUs and the power supply in the center! If it were me, I would go with dual P3s instead of athlons just because the parts are easier to find and possibly cheaper because the parts are more standard.
If you're planning to go for an Athlon no matter what, it might be best to lease it from Einux or a comparable company. You sound like you're expecting money to come in, so your $700 will last about 8 months and by then you should have enough to pay for your lease.
Those irresponsible excuses for journalists at adequacy give false and misleading information on building a PC, simply to increase their page hits. They seem to think that any old Joe Sixpack can build a PC like lego.
I hate those idiots so much. They call themselves adequacy, but I prefer to use Linux King's appropriate nickname, and call them INadequacy.org
To hell with this stupid sheet metal stuff. You can build an awesome rack for almost nothing. I'm doing a five way mosix cluster on a rack made of fiber reinforced portland cement! No shit. It's all hand formed. You can use old rags dipped in cement to form the racks and go all the way to the ceiling. Get the finish you want by rubbing it down with a glove while it's still setting and then use some sandpaper after it's cured and you get an awesome finish that's not as dorked out as plywood would be and it's even cheaper! It's all curvy and sexy and it's a piece of cake. Bitch magnet, I swear. Invite your girlfriend over to help you hand form it.
If cement scares you, then use something else that's cheap. An epoxyed together rack of carbon fiber is probably cheaper than what you're looking at and potentially way cooler. Or weld something yourself if you're really hooked on metal. But why buy 1U cases? It's a suckers market. Just make racks and put the boards on them? What's the point of stuffing them into those little cases unless you're using thousands of them and swapping them in and out all the time and they've absolutely positively got to be modular and of that form factor. Otherwise, who needs them?
People who buy 1U cases think silk ties are for wearing around your neck, not for adding fringes to your cutoffs. Why get into that game? Those people need immersive LSD therapy. Don't do it. Don't borg out. Build your own racks and while you're at it, add a subwoofer enclosure. Ooh, sounding better all the time.
I'd like to build an 8-way xeon server with 64 gigs of RAM and stay within a $900 budget, but it ain't gonna happen.
First off, you want "1U" and "exapandable," which are inherently opposites. 1Us tend to be somewhat custom in design (NOT easy to build yourself from spare parts), and they carry a price premium. I really doubt you could hit that price point (with any level of quality at all) even if you dropped the 1U requirement. For a dual-AMD, Einux's cases alone run over $700!
So, step back and think about what you really need for this application. Why expandability in such a cheap system? By the time you get around to adding another CPU and disk, it might be more cost effective to build a new 1-CPU box from scratch. I would probably go with a single PII at around 933 mHz. Even then, $700 for a 1U will be hard to reach. You probably want to scour Ubid.com and eBay for failed-dot-com loot...
Good luck,
--JRZ
Check out www.eracks.com They have some pretty decent deals, I recently picked up a 1U rack system for about $625... only problems that I had were:
:->
1) Hard drive mounting screws were loose - might have happened in shipping - tightened em up... AOK
2) It's got a lot of fans in it so it's kinda loud
3) I had them install RH 7.1 on it... but they didn't give me a sheet w/the root pw on it. I guessed and it was "eracks"
Other than that, it showed up when expected and I feel I got a good deal... Good 'nuf for the firewall I wanted it for...
I ordered it with an extra 10/100 NIC - PCI. They use a neat adapter! The only thing I don't like about it is the NIC itself is a cheapo and I have to use some half-assed driver for Linux on it *sigh*... Wish it was a 3com... Still it works good 'nuf...