Home Server Room - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 31, 2018, 08:46:18 am
content: I thought I'd share with you what has been a few years in the making (mainly because I've put off finishing the cabling because it's a shit job).Dave has seen the 'before' scene... here is what my server/store room looks like now that it's 99% complete. I still have a little bit of cabling to tidy up in the rack and fix the permanent cabling to cable trays along the wall.What housedoesn'tneed a server room these days?(Apologies for the crap quality pictures, I had to resize/compress them to comply with the forum rules.)Stats:2.4 x 3.5 metres48x Cat. 6 running throughout the house2x Supermicro NAS Servers (totalling ~22TB of usable disk space, with redundancy)1x Cisco 24-port 10/100/1000 switch1x Ubiquiti 16-port Gigabit POE switch3x Ubiquiti UAP-AC-PRO access points throughout the house1x 1500VA APC UPS

author: Lord of nothing
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2018, 10:20:51 pm
content: I wish my one are that clean!

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2018, 11:23:03 pm
content: My server room is in a state of not doing anything, as it's been commandeered by a bunny, so I don't want to turn anything on, lest I upset the bunny.Looks pretty cool though.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 12:10:22 am
content: Quote from: wilfred on April 02, 2018, 12:06:05 amI guess technically it's an additional bedroom or study, but on my plans it was actually marked as "Storage". I have an actual powder room which is just a small bathroom where you can powder your face and re-apply your makeup if you wish.Quote from: wilfred on April 02, 2018, 12:06:05 amI'm not sure if that was a serious question... I sense some Aussie humour but it's difficult to say. It's due to the panorama photograph.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 01:39:48 am
content: That's a very nice set up. My entire network infrastructure sits on a TV cart I bought for $20.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 03:03:38 am
content: My home network infrastructure is a bit hapdash. It's a clash of two systems, one designed to be quick and dirty, and the other one designed to be quick, dirty, and fast. As a result, two "Routers" are strapped together to form one main network (All manual IP assignments, was the original network) and another (sub?)network with a different range of IPs, and dynamic IP assignment, maintained by myself (My dad runs the other one) to work with devices that need DHCP to work (Like Chromecasts). There used to be 4 WLAN APs in this house all at the same time on 4 different SSIDs, but one dropped off, and another one has seemed to stop working, but my Ubiquiti Uni-Fi AP is what I use myself.The rest is just cheap ethernet cable thrown about (literally) to get to different places with one line connecting the upstairs level and the downstairs level.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 05:21:56 am
content: Nice setup. I got a home server room myself, still a lot of work I want to do in it such as converting it to an actual room, and adding proper HVAC. Also need to upgrade to a proper -48v dual conversion UPS setup like telcos but it's hard to find that kind of equipment other than ebay and not really knowing what you're getting so I'll probably end up having to design and build myself when I'm better at electronics.These are older pics so some equipment changed/moved in the rack but it's mostly the same:Right now it's mostly a ESX based environment with an NFS NAS using mdadm raid arrays, I'd like to eventually move to KVM/Qemu, but it's very complex to setup so I just put ESXi for the time being and then never really went further. I need to get another VM server so I can try to leark KVM/Qemu then migrate to it. What I'd like to eventually do is a gluster setup where the VM and storage are all the same servers, and it's just shared with HA. Not sure how easy or if it's even possible to setup something like that though. I would probably end up building my own distro to automate most of it. Pretty big project.Firewall is PFsense and I have a managed switched that everything connects to.Figured I'd add this more recent pic, it includes an Ethereum mining rig. (big server with 3 fans)Only 2 GPUs in there though. Was going to add more over time but the shortage made it difficult and now crypto is crashing so no point.Will probably re-purpose that case for something else. I also want to learn metal working at some point. Wood is not exactly the best material for custom cases especially if I decide to build my own rectifiers etc.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 05:58:25 am
content: Very nice Red Squirrel. I'd hate to think how much your power bill is! In Australia, we get a pretty raw deal on electricity prices, so something like your set up here would be prohibitively expensive to run as a regular residential customer.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 06:50:05 am
content: Our hydro prices are not that great here either (Ontario), but it's the fixed fees where they get you (your minimum bill even if you don't use any power is going to be around $100) so the actual usage does not make that big of a dent. I pay around $150/mo or so, sometimes around $170 at the highest. Believe it or not I'm only drawing around 400w or so as far as servers go though I have not measured again after adding the mining rig. The newer Xeon based servers are actually quite efficient. I was surprised when I clocked them at under 100w.There's a couple things I could look at downsizing though, like the pfsense box and home automation server. pfsense could be replaced by a Netgate box (basically an Arm based box) and the home automation server could be replaced with a RPI.I was at a point where I was spending way too much money on various hardware though so I decided to slow down for now, been a while since I put any major money into it. I think the next big purchase will be power upgrades and possibly solar to supplement power. Our days here are too short for solar to be that viable but it would still help. I imagine solar panels are quite efficient in -40's too.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 08:07:24 am
content: Quote from: Red Squirrel on April 02, 2018, 05:21:56 amI keep reading quotes like this. My experience would be contrary to that. It's extremely easy to set up, run and maintain.My "server" infrastructure is nothing to write home about. A 4RU 24 bay Norco case with 36TB of RAID6, 6TB of RAID5, a 1TB spinning RAID 1, 2x6TB standalone drives for the CCTV NVR and 1TB of "RAID10" SSD hosting 10 or so VMs and serving data over SAMBA/NFS. Power is backed up by an APC SmartUPS 3000 with 10 hours of runtime, and a redundant MGE 2200VA unit via a 2 input ATS (so redundant UPS) and controlled with a switched/metered APC PDU and IBM IP/KVM unit.Compact, easy to manage, easy to cool (sits in a granny flat with its own A/C) and nicely noise isolated so I don't have to compromise cooling for noise purposes.There is a small redundant backup/staging server with another 12TB of RAID6 that gets periodically spun up for backup/testing purposes, but that generally sits powered off. Lastly a watercooled, overclocked little Intel box that I use for running AutoCAD/Revit (AutoCAD screams for single threaded performance, and it just wasn't quick enough on the server with lots of slower cores).Having the whole lot out of the house in a separately housed and cooled space has been a blessing. Max load is about 600W and general average running load is about 260W, so easy to manage.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 08:27:48 am
content: I replaced 4x1Gb cat cable with an optical 10Gb cable, two 10Gb switches, two 10Gb pcs and a Synology 10Gb/s NAS ( but due to the slow WD Gold Disks only get 600MB/s throughput) still enough for me. The rest comes with 1Gb to the switches.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 08:37:57 am
content: Nice server room you have there.I used to have two tall 19" racks with redundant windows servers running and extra UPS and filter.Extra server for FTP access only and so on, all in one special room.It is all gone now and replaced by one small SYNOLOGY NAS with 20 TB of usable space.And since the Synology NAS is so small, I don't need a server room anymore.I still have a small 19" rack for the CAT6 cabling and hub.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 10:08:15 am
content: Thanks HighVoltage, as you can see, most of the space is actually taken up by storage (mostly vintage computer gear). Half of the space in the rack is patch panels and switches, a quarter servers and a quarter PDUs and UPS.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2018, 10:24:16 am
content: ... and don't forget the diesel generatorI've optimized my home data center for low power consumption since I don't get power for free. A central high efficiency DC PSU for replacing ton's of wall warts is also very helpful. This reduces the power consumption of about 50% vs. running the cheap wall warts. Actually I was a little bit surprised because I thought it's going to be just 30-40%.