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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."

15 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. Cool, but... by drivinghighway61 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is pretty useless. The mini-itx chipsets aren't really appropriate for server usage, especially considering the weak VIA processors and the high prices for the boards. I'd much rather just set up a couple of AMD boxes for the price.

    1. Re:Cool, but... by spagetti_code · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps - depends on the application.

      If its IO bound, these may function just fine. Given they run cool (low cooling requirements), quiet and with low power usage, they may provide a good mips-per-operating-$$. They are not that cheap on a $/mips from a capex point of view though.

    2. 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.
    3. Re:Cool, but... by Ryan+Amos · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're fine, even ideal for home server usage. If you don't need the CPU power anyway (and honestly an athlon XP 2000+ is way overkill for most home servers) the power savings are nice. A file server doesn't need more than a crappy CPU and some good SCSI/SATA cards. This is especially true because the server will likely be on 24/7.

  3. Slashdotted by Omicron32 · · Score: 3, Funny

    4 comments and already crawling. Guess we've melted a few of those hard drives then.

  4. Wow by Jeet81 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Wow that's soo cool having a server farm right beside where I sit. :)

    --
    What does your Credit Report look like?
  5. Pretty, but... why? by Joel+Rowbottom · · Score: 3, Funny
    Is it 1997 again already? I mean, *why*?

    It's nice building stuff on your own but this sort of hardware doesn't cut it when you're talking about servers, and I suspect with all the manpower the cost-per-server is actually *more* than if you'd bought it in its entirety.

    Places like Sight Systems will quite happily spray-paint a case for you or even etch a logo into it, and the 2U cases they do will happily house reasonably cheap P4 boards (they even do fans for them).

    Plus, 4U cases which take standard ATX PSUs are now less than £100 in the UK (you get to do the math if you don't live in the UK). Quite why "bloke makes a rackmount server using rackmount bits" makes Slashdot I don't know.

    Oh well. Maybe I'm just getting old.

    --
    Smegma.
  6. But what did it cost? by matthew.thompson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously if this was - Man makes own Blade server using Mini-ITX motherboards that would be damn impressive.

    Imagine having a home cluster in a really small space with hot-pluggable units.

    But this is just Man makes 4 PCs and puts hard drives in them - and spends more than if he'd bought the units anyway.

    --
    Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
  7. 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!

  8. Let me be the first to say... by po8 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nice rack!

    Thanks, I'll be here all week...

  9. Hmm by ZorbaTHut · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I think the idea of having a 19" rack at home is every techs dream."

    Know what I mean, know what I mean? Say no more! Wink wink, nudge nudge.

    Is she a . . . goer?

    --
    Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
  10. the "U" in 1U by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 5, Funny

    "A little info! A "U" is the measured height of a server case 1U is 44.45mm (1.75inches) 19 inches is 482,6mm"

    Actually, the historical roots of the U are traced back to Bonnie Scotland. The U was the designation of how many sheep could be stuffed into the small slot of a server rack. The server rack would then be set afire as the rack doubled as a barbecue on the weekends. (This is where Al Gore studied the creation of the internet incidentally) The phrase "rack of ribs" was also coined in Bonnie Scotland during the infamous "Troy McLure Cuefest of '79" (1879) during a rendition of "Laddie, fetch me ha'notharack o them ribs" performed by, who else, The Scotsmen.

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  11. 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.