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Homebuilt 19" Mini-ITX Server Rack

Posted by timothy on from the mother-of-invention dept.

TykSak writes "I started to build this rack with Mini-ITX boards almost 3 years ago and today it holds four 3U servers with a total of 28 harddrives. I made this site to describe the process of the build."

13 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Summary by kaosrain · · Score: 4, Informative

    TOTAL SPACE:
    4643Gb > 4.53 Tera bytes (28 Harddrives)

    1. Re:Summary by stephenpeters · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is going to interesting for him if he needs to fsck a large filesystem. His hardware specification couples large disk sizes with insufficient memory for fsck to load a large number of ext2/3 inodes during a pass. I hope he has the sense (if using ext2/3 at all) to split his disks into smaller partitions.

      With the current availability of large IDE,firewire and USB disks more and more people will hit resource limits during fsck processes. People using inexpensive systems such as the ones in TFA are unlikley to have the resources to back up tera byte size disks.

      Steve

    2. Re:Summary by antsquish · · Score: 2, Informative

      Given that it seems to be running Windows on all bar the router system, I'd imagine that fsck is a non-issue.

  2. Re:Cool, but... by Orochi · · Score: 1, Informative

    I can see the VIA cpu's being practical in a firewall/VPN node within that rack due to their hardware accelerated encryption engine, as shown in http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/padlock/hardw are.jsp but Pentium M based mini-itx boxes would be a much wiser, albeit pricier choice, performance wise.

  3. Coral Cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    As everyone is melting the servers..

    http://rack.modzone.dk.nyud.net:8090/

  4. He made a rack..... by Meest · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why is this something to post about... measureing 19" is not that hard.... Hell i do it on a daily basis as i work in Pro audio/lighting.

    What would have been simpler to me is to just by a Mid-atlantic rack, get the shelving unit (U1 or U3).

    Find a computer case thats 19" tall. Throw it on its side. screw it to the shelf and then mount it in the case.

    Also could have gotten some 19" blanks and lined the back with fans/outtakes, put an AC Plug on there. along with RJ45 jack that goes to the switch. so it looks cleaner with less wires hanging out.

    http://www.rit.edu/~ajw8557/computer/rack/index.ht ml

    I think these guys did a much cooler job making one that this dude.... at least they did it with an old fridge!

  5. Re:Cool, but... by mcrbids · · Score: 2, Informative

    If its IO bound, these may function just fine.

    One of the servers I manage is a "backup" server that incrementally backs up numerous other hosts using software I wrote (in part) Backup Buddy.

    Basically, it's an old AMD K6-2 450 (yes, it's so ancient it's even AT instead of ATX) with a few PCI IDE controller cards and a crapload of IDE HDDs. CPU performance is irrelevant - it's all I/O bound, rsync over SSH.

    It does the job wonderfully, and has for a long time. I have many months worth of backups of all important hosts and data on this "backup" server..

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  6. Re:Cool, but... by karstux · · Score: 4, Informative

    How about this box? 1.2 TB (with RAID 5) in a neat little package. Since it's an embedded system, it should be ok in the noise/power usage department.

    Unfortunately, I don't own one, so I don't know know if there are any "showstoppers"...

    --
    Don't whistle while you're pissing.
  7. Wrong, wrong by hedgehog2097 · · Score: 2, Informative
    I disagree. There are umptimillion inexpensive Mini-ITX boards out there running servers, large and small. You don't need a lot of CPU to chug bits over a network.

    Mini-ITX boards drive the Internet Archive, for instance:

    http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/22/ 0418253&tid=198&tid=126&tid=137&tid=106

  8. Re:you can 4.5 tera with just 9drives these days.. by shani · · Score: 3, Informative

    It depends on what you mean by "performance", doesn't it?

    We have a database server that is limited by seek speed. For us, splitting our databases and adding more disks is the way forward (until we hit the next bottleneck). So in this case, yes adding more drives equals more performance.

    But, if by performance you mean "throughput", then you are correct that adding more drives will help - to a point. At some point your controller won't be able to keep up with all those drives, and adding more will actually give you no additional benefit.

    For instance, the Maxtor Atlas 15K II has a top transfer rate of over 90 Mbyte/sec. Even the highest-speed SCSI interface only has a throughput of 320 Mbyte/sec.

  9. Re:500W power draw!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative
    Yawn. Call me when you get a clue.

    0.5 kW x 24 hours x 30 days x 0.10 $/kWh

    36 bucks.

    You probably spend more than that on cheetos.

  10. $69 by dickens · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just had to do some googling after I read this. I was amazed to find that one can get a rack mount cases from $69. See here.

  11. Re:you can 4.5 tera with just 9drives these days.. by fnj · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can use more than one SCSI host adapter (they're not really controllers), you know. But then your PCI bus is going to be the bottleneck. Heck, even a 64 bit 66 MHz PCI bus can only move 533 MBps.

    Actually, though, drives are constantly seeking; real world transfers are always bursty; so it's never as bad as the raw drive numbers indicate.