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Rack Mounted PCs for the Home User?
andrewa writes "Do any folks out there have recommendations on available gear for building a small, but extendable, rack-mounted system? As a developer of software for use in contact centers I want to put together a small development system that consists of at least three PCs to create a simulated environment to test my applications in.
Why rack mounted? Well, I want to save space and only have the bare minimum systems (no need for multiple CD-ROMS, monitors, no sound-cards, just lots of memory and HD space).
I also will add to this in the future, so don't want to limit myself to just a few pcs on the system. I've scouted around a bit, but didn't see too much. I'm in the UK at the moment, but will be moving to the U.S. in about 6 months, so power requirements (although I guess most equipment has switchable voltages) is a consideration."
Rack mounted PCs? No thanks.
But an Xgrid cluster something like VA Tech's in my closet I can hook up to the laptops would be nice.
If I sell this scratchy iPod mini I should have enough loose change...
Apple has a Xserve mincluster that has done some things right - small size, acousticly shielded, and on wheels. I must stress the acoustic part if you'e going to work next to this machine - My dual athlon with raid's drone got irritating very quickly.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
december 2003
and
November 2001ish
I do pro audio on the apple platform, and i was looking at getting a g4 xserve to take around to gigs. unfortunately, most computer racks are too deep to fit in a closed end audio rack. I ended up just carrying around a g4 tower, and a rack full of DAT, AUdio interfaces, and other stuff. However, a rack tower is usually open on the back, to allow access to patch cables, etc., so if the case only needs to be screwed in front, you'd be fine.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
That way, you've got as many as you want, $150 each, running Linux... life is good! Get a decent switch and away you go! And, they don't take up too much room or make too much noise... just get a table and stack 'em.
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
Instead of 3 separate boxes ( with their associated power issues, OS issues, maintenance, etc ) to deal with, just get one really nice one.. and run VMware on it..
It should be cheaper, for a home user.. and has other advantages as well. Such as easy manageability, quickly recovering blown systems after a bad test, changing OS's on the fly..
Just make sure to get tons of RAM ( which is cheaper then an entire machine )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
a Dell rack system.
Don't forget to ask them about the complimentary ear protectors.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Just buy a 4 foot painted aluminum 19" open telco rack. Put heavy duty rubber casters on it. Install an APC SmartUPS 1200XL RM in the bottom of the rack . . . will keep the rack from tipping over. Tie the rack to the power ground of the feed to the UPS for static dissipation. You can then rack-up three or four 19" rackmount cases, with plenty of room to spare for a rackmount ethernet switch or a router at the top.
We use them at all of our ISP POP locations.
Consider getting desktop cases and putting them in a cheap stereo cabinet?
Some of the new mini-atx, and smaller cases from Antec (like the Minuet) and Shuttle would be quiet and fit the bill.
(reposted from an old Ask Slashdot on almost the same topic)
I needed a cabinet that I could use to house a server, a hub, and my stereo. I used plywood for the bottom, top, and two sides. I used oak for the facing to reinforce it, and left the back open. I wanted something presentable so I used biscuits and wood glue to hold it all together.
I bought a pair of rails from MilesTek and for the back rails I used aluminum from Home Depot and drilled my own holes. In retrospect, that was a bad idea, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble by just buying two sets of rails. It's good to have a solid metal frame built before trying to attach it to the wood part.
It's not quite finished yet, I plan to either use glass or perforated metal for the door.
Here here is a picture.
If you don't care about aesthetics, it would be a lot less trouble to buy something from Ebay or a government auction.
I can only fully recommend the Mappit A4F 19-1HE , which comes in a black chassis ready for a 19" rack. I bought my first one recently, and it's doing a great job. This box is ideal for servers run in private homes, since they are low-energy consumption (low-$$ when run 24/7 like mine) and low-noise (can live in a corner of your living-room without being noticed).
It's built by a German company, but they shipped it to the UK quickly and hassle-free, so they might as well ship to the US.
A friend of mine, who had first recommended the Mappit series to me, runs a set of smaller ones. All solid metal cases, and Linux/BSD installed easily (no 'Microsoft tax').
> Rackmount? For 3 pcs? Something small? ... ATX!
Yes and yes -- luckily, that's not a contradiction at all.
Happy Easter, all!
I run a couple of dozen PCs with a couple of terabytes using garden-variety mid-tower cases sitting on 2 parallel steel shelving units with an aisle in between.
The backs of the machines are to the aisle and I have a common keyboard/monitor/mouse setup with long extension cables that I swap as necessary.
I run Linux so I only need the keyboard and console in exceptional circumstances. If I were forced to run Windows, I would use VNC and a similar setup.
Each machine has 4 ATA hard drives and no CD. For system setup, I do a network install initiated from a floppy. All other maintenance is over the network.
While this setup is a little bit clumsier than a rack system might be, it is far cheaper because it is built 100% from commodity components.
Take a look at IBM's Blade Center. While it might be overkill for your application, they have a number of strong suits. You can fit up to 14 system boards in the chassis, each having 2 CPUs. The chassis itself is a 7U unit, which is quite small considering what you can put into it. It has a dedicated system management system. And the best part is the cost -- the chassis will set you back at first, but the system boards are quite reasonable after that. There's a refurbed one on eBay that has the chassis with 7 system boards, each having dual Xeon 2.0Ghz, at $9,800 Buy It Now. A lot of money, yes, but trust me, you can pay more than that for a single low-end 1U unit new from IBM.
Best solution posted yet. Exactly what I did to fit my couple of rackmount servers, switches and UPS.
Except I went the next step, and got two squirrel cage blowers (low speed, low noise), encased it with plywood, used some of that foam with the ridges on the inside (with enough room on the sides for some airflow), made some zig-zaging baffles with plywood, and lined them with that foam (the bottom two feet are baffles and fan space, with two sets of baffles on the top--there's also a regular furnace filter installed in the bottom. Very nice to keep all of the dust and shit out), and had the local glass guys order me a tripple pane window that would fit the front. Painted the result OD green, and put some of the Korea era jeep stickers on it, very badass looking.
I went the extra way because those damn rackmount servers are damn loud. No, actually the switches are louder. But anyway, it's in the basement, and despite being in another room, it could be heard in the entertainment area, which was unacceptable. It's pretty much silent, now, the most that can be heard is the moving air, which is just a little breeze (but it's pretty warm!) I haven't studied the airflow, but it seems to keep everything cool enough.
My rack cost ~$300-$350, IIRC.
http://www.gadget-freak.com/setup.JPG
The owner of a local ISP and collocation center that I'm friends with runs the whole operation out of his basement. He has a "rack" for all of his Cisco core routers and Sun Sparc systems (what you might call the infrastructure of the place), which he made by simply setting up two parallel 2x4 boards from the floor to the ceiling. They're secured to the floor with rivets (cement basement floor), and into the joists overhead with screws.
Probably not the flashy solution you're after, but it holds the equipment perfectly and securely.
It's actually quite funny to see that to your left, and to your right a full-on, professional, centrally-cooled Sun rack. His basement is geek heaven.
It's NetPlex, by the way. Yes, he hosts a WinZip mirror.
--
The Bailiwick - DESIGNHUB2005
That scheme is most certainly NOT "high density". It is extremely LOW density; in the space of a dozen desktop machines(if that; probably more like 8), I can place FORTY TWO 1U rackmount systems. Uh huh. You read that right. That's not even as dense as you can get- the ultimate are blade servers, of which you can fit something like a dozen in 4-5U of space, complete with a built-in high speed network switch, KVM/LOM and power distribution all builtin to the case.
Desktop cases are a HUGE waste of space in enterprise environments because everything you need is usually built-in to the server mobo; I've never seen a server with anything save a SCSI RAID card in a PCI slot. So all the space for 5+ full size PCI slots is wasted...
Rackspace's 'scheme' is done when you have a)a boatload of space(because your target market is grossly oversaturated) and b)a need for as low a margin as possible(because your target market is grossly oversaturated and because it's low-scale, borderline consumer stuff, it's extremely price-competitive; in enterprise hosting, people ask about your financials before they ask about how big your genset is). Ie, Rackspace went the absolute cheapest route possible, and their customers will suffer as a result.
Why? Well, first cooling in rackmount cases is excellent; it's piss-poor in desktop cases, usually...so expect hard drive failures. NONE of the components are easily swappable; instead of "pull machine out on its rails, pop the top, place new memory in, push system back in", you've got "unplug the machine, pull it out of the shelf because there's no clearance on any of the sides, put it on a workbench, pop the case, put in the memory, put it back together, put it back in the shelf, plug it all in".
God help you if you need to swap power supplies- they're several screws and connectors all over the place; drives, fans, motherboard. You take 20 minutes, while I take 15 seconds to slide the lever, pull the PS module, put the new one in, lock the lever, and plug the power cord back in. Done, while you're on screw #2.
Yes, not an issue for this fellow, but your implication that Rackspace is somehow engaging in innovative thinking is ludicrous. No professional hosting company would even consider such bullshit.
And yes, I said professional; Rackspace caters to individuals, not corporations, and non-managed hosting- pretty much putting them a step above Joe and Bob's ISP, but not by much. I've worked for a commercial-only managed hosting company, and unlike Rackspace which let you "visit", it's an entirely different sort of place; customers don't set foot in the place, the building isn't marked, etc.
Please help metamoderate.
Definitely the way to go: I used to use just laptops for the same problem - now I use my own laptop with VMWare - that way I can devleop stuff at work/ home/ university.
The other big plus is that if your virtual machine falls over in a big way, you just load up a new virtual machine, and away you go.
It also solves the problem about testing with multiple client OS's.
I certainly agree that you need shedloads of memory - 1 Gig is the minimum to run a couple of guest VMs and a host OS without your machine swapping all the time.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Why not? Because laptops aren't designed to be servers. They generally underperform similarly-classed full-size systems, are generally not designed to be always-on, have flakey hardware, etc., etc.
:)
Furthermore, laptop harddrives are much slower than server-class storage and, in my experience, have a much lower life expectancy.
Finally, laptops dump a lot of heat out their bottoms and don't like to be stacked on atop another. If you try this, you're liable to end up with a fire or, at the very least, hardware failures, in short order.
I think "use the right tool for the job" applies here...
By the way - don't forget to check the voltages on your networking equipment. Most of the modern network hubs, switches, etc. will be ok for 110-220V, but you'll need several adapter plugs or power cords (if you're lucky and the cord can be swapped). Or replace the power supplies with "universal adapters" - something like this is inexpensive ($14).
Regarding extension cords and "power strips": I had brought my "high quality" power strips from the US - the ones with built in surge protectors - in hindsight it's no surprise that the "extra" 110 V is considered a surge. :(
So now I have a pile of extension cords and power strips that are completely useless.
One more tip: Before you go and purchase conversion plugs for your equipment, you may just want to purchase new power cords ($2.50) that are usually cheaper that the conversion plug ($15), plus it will be the proper size for US outlets. The UK plugs will usually make every-other outlet on a US power strip unusable due to the size difference.
Instead of VMWare consider User Mode Linux. It is free. And it permits you to run many virtual servers per host server. e.g. you should be able to run 16-30 virtual servers per 3Ghz Intel proc. Just make sure you have enough memory (4GB is handy).
With Copy on Write file systems you can prep up your testing environment. Snapshot it. Run your tests. Then nuke the resulting file systems and start again. Being able to start a test run with the whole file system in the state it was in when you started (without having to roll back individual files and databases) is very convenient.
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Racks aren't that expensive, if you know where to look. Racks are used in many industries, IT, and music. Check this out. Get a 6U burnished aluminium case for ~$80. Sure, cut a few holes in it for I/O, but it's cheap and easily transportable.
Cheap hardware is hideous and prone to not ever working properly, this is why rackmount servers use decent boards, memory and drive controllers. Desktops are ugly, I gave up and went rackmount after 3.
Laptops don't use regular hardware, are not designed to be stacked (hint: this is why rack systems were invented), are a pain to service and are hideously overpriced.
Or a brand new bottom end rack unit for 500, even a 64bit box for just over a grand!
One of the datacenters I've written code for runs dual 1u dual XEON racks for it's back end. I don't really think VMware cuts the mustard when it comes to emulating dual processor SCSI RAID boxes, for database work. Good luck with your laptops!
To save money the company I work for bought a couple of dells and runs 8 VMWare machines each - it means we can offer 'dell hosting' to our clients but it's dirt cheap. We have racks but we'd need a lot more if we had to use real machines to do the work (Yes it's unethical but cheap is important to that company.. they told me to bootleg devpartner and gave me a week to do it rather than pay for a copy to solve a bug - which was holding up a $300,000 contract... go figure).
I'd expect for a home machine one box with lots of memory would be cheap and do the job unless you're running really CPU intensive tasks.
Total cost for VMware = $300 for the software
Actually, VMware is now only $199 (boxed) or $189 (download). They reduced the price a while ago.
Informative? I find the parent ignorant. There are 4-5U rackmountable standard ATX cases available for around $75, and take standard PSUs and motherboards. I have built one myself, and was pleased with the cost... about $50 more than a standard PC, all because if the case.
The parent is only valid if you are building a custom 1-2U system, or are going for higher-end rackmount cases.
It's not expensive if you know where to look - companies such as StudioSpares (in the UK) sell pro audio equipment racks dead cheap. The companies that you might first go to (in the UK, Canford, Stage Electrics etc) are very expensive, but it's still very much a misconception to say all pro audio equipment costs a lot.
For example, I picked up a pro audio rack mounted Tascam CD player for theatre use for around 100 - cheaper than domestic players with the same features, and this model came with an industrial warrenty (as opposed to the domestic models, which come with a "home only" warrenty). The same applies to audio PCs - companies like Carillion sell rack mounted PCs without pro audio software for about the same as a brand name PC. Still more expensive than building your own, but not the 500% markup you describe.
You could do something like this.
Or just use mini-itx pc's, they're much more silent, and use less power...