Home Server Rooms?

Tuzanor writes "I've got a buddy moving into a brand new house. Being geeks, we've decided to wire the house with a large home network. While this story took care of wiring the house, we need to figure out how to create a well set up server room. We'll be having both towers and rack mounted computers as well as various switches, UPSes, etc. Also, we figure this room will get warm, even in winter. How may we cool it while still keeping the rest of the house toasty warm on a cold Canadian night (without opening a window)"

Invitations

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try to invite some cool chicks.

heat concerns

[TheEviscerator]

As far as heat is concerned, I wouldn't worry too much. Given the extreme lack of sexual activity associated with wiring your house with switches, UPSes, and god-knows what other geek toys, your house should stay plenty cold throughout the year, especially during the winter.

Here's an idea.

[andrei sama]

Tell a few people that they can room for free in this new house if they stay in that room. And blow upon the servers. For all eternity.

Easy

[TACD]

I do assume that your server room will be in the basement / garage? Good-o.

Is there any real reason why you can't just buy a couple of those big basement freezers and put them in there? It can't be too hard to put in extra lights if you need them, and I guess some silica dessicant would be a good thing to have in there too...

After all, it is only a home server room. ;-)

It's a bit unorthodox but...

[Kirkoff]

Start with two racks, fill them with servers, Put the towers in the middle. Now, stuff those in to a small closet. You're running these all a bit OC'd, right? Great, now got to the store and pick up a product called "Cake Mix." Follow the directions on the box. It will likley need milk, water, and eggs. Put this solution in a pan and then you've got an oven that can play quake.

No, no, no!

[Cally]

You don't want a carefully planned, neatly laid-out NoC with aircon, swivel chairs, subdued lighting etc. A good comfy ops room shoudl grow organically over the years.

You want a cramped, untidy little room, with a stack of buzzing boxen to the left (from the bottom: OpenBSD, Linux, Cisco IOS, topped off with an old 15" monitor). No KVM - that's cheating; you have to scrabble around amongst the spaghetti cabling to switch the monitor to another box. Keep spare kbd's, mice etc draped over the monitor or propped against the wall when not in use; with the lights off, those three extra LEDs on the keyboard add to the girlfriend-impressing "Starship Enterprise" look'n'feel. To the right, balanced on top of the tower system housing your main workstation, you want an old analogue modem, and a desktop switch of some sort. Make sure the CAT5 from the rest of the house terminates just behind this switch - that way you get to mix the network cables up with the PSU, parallel cable->backup device, serial extenstions, phone plug-thrus etc. Top with stacks of unread magazines - New Scientist, Perl Journal etc - a couple of rows of books (remember to break the O'Reilly hegemondy with a carefully placed K&R, the Conway book, perhaps something on OO, SQL, firewalls, IDS and network security. Season with a sprinkling of "carefully filed" hardcopies of whitepapers, Slashdot stories, tech specs, man pages, discussions on the use of IGMP in scanning.

Remember to get the carpet professionally steam-cleaned once or twice a year. Remember to empty the waste basket and remove uneaten food and drink containers.

Cover the walls in Dilbert cartoons, printouts of UserFriendly, inadvertently amusing advertising materials, color "maps of the internet", and the SANS "Network Security Roadmap" poster (change every six months!)

My personal shelter from the world, which looks just like this of course, copes with (a) having no radiators (or windows) by being right in the core of the building, so avoiding getting too hot in summer; and (b) avoiding getting too cold in winter (it's below zero outside, here in the UK at present) by housing the central heating boiler.

At one point I seriously contemplated moving a campbed in here to save rent (I'm unemployed, & live in a shared house.) But my girlfriend said she'd cut my balls off, and then leave me. So that was that :)

Re:Invitations

[mrpotato]

You could try to invite some cool chicks.

Yeah, because cool chicks are attracted to server rooms like flies are attracted to shit...

Noble principles but...

[QuickFox]

(without opening a window)

What's wrong with opening a window? I know, I know, everybody here loves Linux, but aren't you getting carried away here?

Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.

Re:Invitations

[Anonymous Coward]

Or some hot chicks to the other parts of the house in the winter.

Re:Cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

"Have another set of vents to pull the hot air from the server room into back into the house."

Make sure you don't run any GNU software on those servers, because it will start to smell goat shit all around your house.

Re:No, no, no!

[craw]

But my girlfriend said she'd cut my balls off, and then leave me.

Geez, you already have boxen running OpenBSD and Linux. Why not have your balls cut off. Then you will then run (literally) another variant, eunuchs.

Re:Natural cooling

[nmos]

" Uh, it says in the abstract "(without opening a window). Who looks stupid now? :)"

Why would diging a big hole in the floor require opening a window? :)

Re:Localized Thermometers

[xmedar]

Shurely this should be under Funny Laugh... any self respecting geek would make the ceiling one giant Peltier Cooler, and there arent even specs for the servers, I mean if they think they can call themselves geeks without bragging about the Connection Machine they bought of Ebay or atleast talking nerdishly about racks full of 1U dual Athlon MP 1.6GHz boxes with 3 gig of DDR2100 ( sorry I refuse to call them 1900+...ughh)... is this News for Nerds or News for Wannabe Nerds, I ask you?

COOL Room

[RJR]

Place the racks on turntables with bookcases on the other side. Build a nice antique-looking table where the front cover slides to reveal the keyboard(s) and raises the monitors to a comfortable 45 degree reading angle. You've seen the Bond movie: "Just Like Home." Add the door switch or motion sensor for the alarm system so all screens go to screen-saver mode with your official looking logo (RCMP?) popping up as the lighting changes to red. (AKA, a recent JAG episode.) Others have answered the cooling question, but this will have your friends, clients, police, etc, saying "COOL!" Bob

Re:Come on...

[Darwin_Frog]

You stick a movable baffle inside the main duct to take the warm air outside. Then you swear off of CFCs for the rest of your life and the global warming balances out.

Re:Noble principles but...

[duffbeer703]

The process of opening a window is under a BSD license. A GPL solution is needed.

Uptime?

[ZigMonty]

I'd like to see someone try positioning their computers by uptime! "Noooo, don't plug the vacuum in there... ah crap."

Re: Invitations

[Octorian]

You know "2 of those"? Are you sure you didn't mean you knew "the 2" that are attracted to server rooms?