Ask Slashdot: Building A Server Rack Into a New Home?

jawtheshark writes "I'm building a house, and obviously I want a modest network built-in. Nothing fancy, two RJ-45 per room, four in the living room, and that's basically it. I already got myself a rack mountable Cisco Small Business switch and I have a self-built 4U server (low-power, won't make much heat) which can be rack mounted (505mm deep). Now, the construction company suggests a wall mounted rack (6U: 340mm x 600mm x 480mm — 6U definitely won't be enough, but a 12U model exists). It's not expensive, but I have never worked on a rack where the backside is unreachable. (For work, I get to work in a data center with huge racks that are accessible from both sides). Now obviously, I don't need a data center-grade rack, but these wall-mounted racks scream 'switch-only' racks to me. What are your experiences? Is it possible to put servers in racks like these, or should I find a 'both-side-accessible' rack instead?"

Comments

42U - Go Big or Go Home

[y00nix]

Why mess around with wall-mount brackets? You'll be cramped for depth when you want to throw in a real PoE switch, or some other gear you're not thinking about now. They also have swing-out racks that you can open the front and back from (as there are hinges on one of the back sides), but you'll pay quite a bit for these. I believe they are somewhere in the realm of $300-350 when we buy them for clients. Personally - I like lots of space, because you never know when you'll want to end up building a home theatre or adding another server, and centralizing all the gear where it should be - the server room. I have 42U 4-post black open frame rack (from a common manufacturer), that I picked up off Craigslist for $150 (normally $400 new)...and put it in a closet I converted into a server room. Put down a new floor, and raised the floor a couple inches where the server rack goes (no underfloor cooling unfortunately). Two dedicated 20A 110V circuits, two 1500VA batteries w/ mgmt cards, two 15A PDUs. CAT6 patch panel in the rack, also have a 2x2 wallboard with 66 block for CAT3 termination. No 6509 yet ;)

Re:42U - Go Big or Go Home

[flyneye]

Why worry about mounting anydamn expensive thing?
You're building a server room. Got 4 walls? STOP!
Measure 6 ft. from the wall. Put up a wall frame, like you were gonna sheetrock it. Space the 2"x4"s on 17 3/4" centers and use woodscrews for your new 64u rows of racks. This presumes you have 8 ft. ceilings. Got slides? Put another frame 3 ft. behind it. add fans.
Measure out another 5 or 6 ft. if you have another 11 or 12 and put in another room length row of racks. Leave one open in each for rear access. Leave two if you're fat and remove the board in the way.
This creates easy cooling methods using at least 3 halls for this scenario.
If you're in an office building or strip. you can come in on the weekend and tap your neighbors air conditioner to cool your server rooms. All you need is a ladder , some ducting, rivet gun, rivets and a cutoff wheel or tin snips. Send the cool air low to cool the computers and force the hot rising air out. Again duct this INTO your neighbors space, it will encourage them to turn up their air conditioner.
We're talking about cutting costs here friend.
You want a bonus for cutting costs? Promotion? Just save the boss money and draw up some bullshit pie chart to show him just how much. Toot your own horn.
You just set up a kickass server room with total access for replacements and room to expand Expand EXPAND. Cheap.
2x4s and wood screws. Ducting.

Re:42U - Go Big or Go Home

[xQx]

Couldn't agree more.

To answer the poster's direct question: Yes, I have dealt with racks that you can't get to the back of. I've dealt with racks that have the vertical rails integrated into the sides. I've dealt with half-height racks, wall mounted racks that swing out so you can get to the back of them, and I've dealt with home-made racks that have rails that bend when you hang a server from the front. I've also worked with Compaq servers with mounting brackets that don't work unless your rails are exactly the right distance apart front-to-back (meaning you need to tear down a whole rack to re-position the rails, to mount one bloody server).

I have the following advice:

1. DO NOT BUY WALL MOUNTED RACKS (unless you are a large corporate or a public building).
They are ugly as sin, they are never deep enough, and in a small-business or home environment they are only good for bumping heads on. If they swing out, half the time the installer hasn't accounted for the full weight of a loaded rack and it feels like it's going to fall off the wall.They are not built to deal with the heat of POE switches, let alone servers. Unless you need the security given by them, it's cheaper, more attractive and more accessible to mount a switch vertically on a wall or in a cupboard.

2. DO NOT BUY HALF-HEIGHT RACKS (unless you desperately need the space)
They cost almost as much as full-height racks, they often get replaced with full-height racks after 2 years because they get full - in the end they are almost never worth it.

3. LOOK VERY CLOSELY AT CHEAP RACKS
A good rack will last you 10 years. A bad rack will last you 20 years and piss you off every time you go near it. Imagine mounting a full-depth POE switch to the front rail of a rack, then seeing that the back of the switch is about 2RU lower than the front, because the front vertical rail has bent under the weight. That's what happens when they make the vertical rails out of 1mm low tensile steel, not 2mm high tensile steel. Or, imagine having a server or router that has decided to put a RJ45 port on the front (usually an iLo port) and you find you have to either leave a whole RU free above the server to run the cat-5 cable back. Welcome to the joys of an APC rack, where the vertical rails are moulded to the edge of the rack.

4. AT HOME - USE A CABINET MAKER
If you want the best & cheapest solution - I'd build a cupboard big enough for you to put a second hand 42RU rack on wheels into it, and terminate your RJ45's on 6-gang wall outlets at the top of the cupboard. For cooling, put a vent in the top of the door and run a ducted air-con duct to the bottom of the cupboard. Then you just roll your rack out when you need it, to guests it looks like a cupboard, and the next home owner will turn it into a linen closet.
But, if you want something that looks a million dollars, I would take the internal steel of a comms rack and mount it on rolling cupboard rails (do the maths on the weight) and integrate it into a full-height cupboard, so when you open the cupboard door the whole rack slides out for you. If you get a friendly cabinet maker to do it while you're building the house, you would probably have the whole thing done for less than the price of an APC rack.

Re:42U - Go Big or Go Home

[similar_name]

I just nail the motherboards to the wall.

Avoid the wall-mount, and here's how I did it.

[Above]

I have seen wall-mount racks that side-mount to the wall, leaving the front and back of equipment accessible. That said, I'm not wild about any of the wall mount racks, at some point they will all be a pain.

If you have the floor space a small, 4 post cabinet is the way to go. You can often find used ones around for cheap. 4 post is preferred if you're going to have any quantity of systems in them. If the system count is low, and you won't do any 1RU or 2RU systems, a 2-post telco rack is super cheap and might take up less space. I put one in a basement a few years back. 4RU's mount fine with just front rails (screwed in, not on slides of course), and switches, routers, patch panels all work fine in a 2 post setup. Run a 20A dedicated run to it with a computer grade power strip down the side and you're set for life.

FWIW, having done a few houses, my recommendation is that each jack position get 5 cables, 3xCat5e and 2xRG6. These get terminated on a 6 position keystone, 2xRJ45 Network on top, 2x2-line RJ-11 (4C) in the middle, sharing the third Cat5 (blue/orange first jack, green/brown second), and then two RG6's get Coax jacks on the bottom.

The wire cost is low, additional pull cost is low. You pay a small amount to terminate all of that. However, you now have more than you'll ever need everywhere. That Sat system down the road, 2xCoax, check. Desktop and VoIP phone, 2 jacks, check. Home and business land lines, check. Buy keystone rack panels for your new rack, a row of network, next to the switch, row of telephone next to some splitters and/or DSL filters (if necessary), row of cable next to splitters and amps for whatever system type you have. Below that machines as necessary.

Far easier to pull up front than to be frustrated and without later.

Re:Another suggestion..

[Anonymous Coward]

Running open ended pvc pipe could be a building code violation. At the very least, you'd have to look into fire blocking the ends after installation. Even with plenum rated cables, you could be denied for a fire claim due to this 'neat' addition.

Re:Go with fiber optic

[Shoten]

Dude, if you think the future of connectivity is fiber, you need to leave the 90s and come join us here in 2012. I'm not sure what's so 'future proof' about a relatively temperamental connectivity media that is supported by exactly *no* household devices, and very few wifi access points. As for the "future," I would point out that every high-speed LAN technology started as fiber and then became copper...because fiber is a colossal pain in the ass compared to copper. When something consistently goes from one thing to another, this is called a "trend," and trends tell you about the future. It ain't fiber.

Re:Hinged

[larry bagina]

He's talking about a server, not a sex dungeon.

Re:Go with fiber optic

[green1]

Conduits, even in new houses are expensive and difficult to install to every jack, and quite frankly, overkill.
As a telco field installer here is my recommendation to everyone who asks about construction or renovation:
- 2 cat5 and 2 coax to every place you could possibly ever want a TV or computer (and a minimum of one set to every room in the house)
- drop ceiling in the basement. (if you finish the basement at all, and there better be one, at least a crawl space)
- actual conduit, with as few bends as possible, as short as possible, and at least 1" diameter between the outside of the house where the telco connects, and the main panel in the basement where everything terminates
- clear access and several square feet of free backboard where everything terminates. (and a power outlet, for the love of all things holy, let us have a power outlet!)

my reasoning:
- Too many existing houses have only coax and cat5, any new technology that is wide spread WILL find a way to use it, or will go wireless, If they don't, they'll never get the market share.
- It's amazing how much wiring you can do, even on the top floor of a multi-story house, as long as the basement ceiling is accessible, if I need to run new wires to somewhere I cringe when i see a drywalled basement ceiling.
- This is the one place where it is absolutely critical to run conduit, luckily when done right this conduit is only 1' long. (and if you're one of those builders that puts the service entrance on the opposite side of the house from where you put the main panel... I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!)
- This is where the changes in technology will be, and whatever the future brings, people will need to get at it and work on it. (You wouldn't believe how many people drywall over the termination block with the large sign that says "WARNING: leave free access to this connection point at all times")

As for racking, if you have the space, put whatever you want in it, but generally for the amount of equipment likely to be in your home, a shelf somewhere near the main panel is probably sufficient, even for a rack mount server and switch. I don't recommend doing anything that denies you access to the back of a rack, but often you can get them on swingouts of one form or other. We actually have a place in our city where our company has built what they call a WIC (Walk In Cabinet) which is really somewhat of a concrete bunker. It houses the telco end ADSL equipment, as well as other telco gear and such. The racks are all against the wall as the place is only about 6' - 8' wide with 2 rows of racks and a hall down the middle. all the racks have a hinge on one side and a wheel on the other so you can swing them open to get at the back (thereby blocking the aisle completely) (all cables properly dressed to the hinge side) these work well for the tight space (though I have some choice words for the person who thought this whole structure was a good idea... it has a ladder to get in to it for goodness sake, and the door at the top is only 3 feet tall! (not to mention that the punchdown blocks for the telcom circuits use a different punch tool than any other place in the city...))

The Real Thing You Want is Low Power

[RudyHartmann]

Good grief. If you're going to run a home network, what the heck do you need a fire breathing data center for? I have done this at my house for my family. I have Cat5 cable running through the house. But no matter how hard I have tried to predict the future of technology, I have missed the boat too often. Forget all the big power hungry servers and resources. It's ridiculous to build a home system that requires active external cooling. The most I have needed was sharing files, printers, DHCP, firewall, webserver, domain controller and a few misc goodies. I have done this all on some tiny super low power Via based mini-ITX based motherboards. The darn things together use fewer watts than my workstation. Most of them run notebook 2.5 inch low power drives. An enclosed area can get pretty hot, but these don't. My one big main server for sharing video, music and other stuff does run some 7200 RPM 3.5" drives, but they go into hibernate when they haven't been used for a while, then do a wake a request is made. Those are 2TB SATA drives that are mirrored. I do want more storage though. I connect my computer, my kids computers and all the TV's. I use some of the TV's for monitors too. I connect the Sony PS3's and I also have a wireless network for my laptop. I have 2 printers. A standard B&W laser printer and a nice color inkjet . I only have 1 RJ45 per room. I use a hub or switch there if I need more. I can control all the security via the main server. I run my own domain too. Anyway, it let's me control what my kids can do or guests. My network is controlled by Linux too. I don't need a rack, or special cooling or any of that stuff. Beware of over engineering. It's all a few tiny cases sitting sideways on a closet shelf. I have ripped my favorite movies and stored them on my servers. I also ripped my entire CD collection of music. It never skips on music or video. I have 2 external USB interface drivew for a backups that I rotate. I always keep one of these at the office in case the house burns down. This is an on going project that has been a lot of fun. Keeping it all cool and the electricity bill is negligable.