Ask Slashdot: Building A Server Rack Into a New Home? 402
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?"
Go with fiber optic (Score:5, Insightful)
Go with fiber optic. Nothing fancy. Just future proofing. That or conduits with pull strings.
Avoid wall mounts. Those are too limiting. Make space for a rack cabinet, even if a small one like 16U. Don't back it into a wall. Make sure you can move all around. And a small mini-split cooling system just for that room (it will accumulate heat if closed in).
Another suggestion.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If the drywall isn't up yet, take the opportunity now to run PVC conduit to the server rack closet from the room locations where you're planning on Ethernet drops, and possibly to other locations where you might want to run AV cable later on, such as likely mounting locations for a ceiling-mounted projector. It'll save you a ton of work later drilling through studs and firestops later on. Even if you don't run the cable now, you can run a fish tape through conduit and pull cable through it without having to cut through drywall to route it, especially in rooms that have no access to the top or bottom of the wall space.
I'll also agree with y00nix on the impossibility of having too much rack space. You never know what you might decide to install later, and more rackspace (and preinstalled conduit, see above) give you more expansion options. Trust me, 5-10 years down the road if not sooner, you're going to want to put more stuff in that closet. :D
Re:two RJ-45 per room (Score:4, Insightful)
And wifi speeds suck compared to gigabit ethernet. And exactly how am I supposed to replicated my 47tb with 'small footprint' servers?
Re:two RJ-45 per room (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why datacenters are all WiFi right?
Re:two RJ-45 per room (Score:2, Insightful)
I had a house wired just like OP, with one Cat 6 wired RJ45 per room, every 15 feet or so in the big rooms. I thought it would be awesome! In the server closet (upstairs, in the middle of the house, in a closet) I had a wifi hotspot, a WRT54G. Because of its high, central location, I got great wireless access everywhere in the building. (actually, most of the city block)
Guess how often I used the wired plug ins? (Hint: It was very rare.)
I moved. My new house has no RJ45 connectors in the walls. I don't miss them much. When I need the speed, (EG: LAN parties) I have a 50' Cat6 cable I roll along the ground. Nobody minds much rolling it up at the end of the day.
You aren't running a data center. If you want to do that, get a job where you get to. Otherwise, spend $50 on a used wifi router on Craigslist or Ebay, mount it up high in the attic, and forget about it.
Spend the money and time you save getting a girlfriend. (or making the one you have happier)
Re:42U - Go Big or Go Home (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another suggestion.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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:two RJ-45 per room (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly why do I need reduntant power, redundant networking and locked cages for a home network? All I need is tons of storage and very fast interconnects. Every PC in my house does backups to the server. The same server also serves media to all the media devices in the house. There is a middle ground between grandma checking her email and a professional web host. Some people's requirements may be different than yours. Deal with it.
Experience says you are a noob (Score:5, Insightful)
I am some guy who has done stuff like this, including oversaw the construction of a custom condo where I directed certain changes be made to accommodate data networking and a little server room. For my day job, I sysadmin and have directed the construction of a modern mid-size data center (30 racks) and multiple office environments. I oversee lots of structured cabling installations.
I have beat my head against the wall many times, over stupid stuff. So, let me give you some advice.
For example, the fact that you want a 4U rackmount anything in your home is just crazy. Knock it off. You really don't want anything rackmount in your home, though that is the only form factor you are going to find larger switches in.
No professional sysadmin or programmer would put a rackmount server in his home because he knows it is stupid. There is a reason you put computer guts into that form factor and those same reasons do not apply in your home. Get over it.
You are using the logic of "Penguins are Black and White. Some Old TV Shows are Black and White. Therefore, Some Penguins are Old TV Shows" . Just because professionals use rack servers in data centers doesn't mean you are a professional when you put one in your home.
You almost certainly do not want a rackmount chassis for your server. Instead, use a desktop chassis which meets your needs (or whatever is cheapest). The only time you might use a rackmount chassis would be for mounting it directly onto a wall using the ears, but even then, I would never use a 4U height chassis.
Same thing goes for the patch panels. You don't need a rack at all. Ortronics makes a nice little 12-port wall-mounter patch panel which is perfect for home use. I have exactly 24 cat5e runs in my home, so two of them were perfect. FYI Ortronics also makes pretty good jacks and plates too -- get a catalog and call your local Anixter or Graybar for an order.
In my particular case, I have a single do-it-all server with five internal SATA disk drives for primary storage, an old SCSI card which attaches to an external DLT tape drive for backups, and I have an external 5-disk SATA enclosure which is inside of a fire-proof enclosure in case the place burns down. I have a bunch of old APC UPS units in the home which all have network cards in them. I use wireless only for my laptop and phone, where every room has at least two network jacks and as many as eight.
The biggest issues in this server closet are air flow for heat removal, and noise isolation. I live in the southwest where it gets really hot in the summer and the closet where I keep my gear is next to the garage, where it gets warm. I had to cut a vent into the door near the bottom so fresh/cool air could enter the closet, and I have a small fan which blows the old/hot air into the garage. The little 'server closet' has that do-it-all server with the ten disk drives, a cable modem, a 24-port switch, an APC UPS, an APC per-port controlled PDU, and sometimes I keep a second little cheapy server in there for experiments. So I need a little bit of air flow to keep it at a reasonable temperature in there.
However, all of these fans and junk make noise, which is bad. My old switch was the worst offender and I had to ditch it for a different switch. I also found that wall-mounting the switch caused vibrations to go through the wall, so I had to solve that problem by putting it on a small shelf with a layer of foam underneath.
Cat5e cable is probably fine for now. I like Berk-Tek brand riser/plenum cable as an intermediate of price and quality. If you really want to be able to do 10GBASE-T some day, you will have to go with Cat6a, which is crazy expensive. FYI, the current 10GBASE-T spec calls for spans of something like 25 meters with Cat5e, so you might be able to do 10GBASE-T over the Cat5e anyway.
Get over it, stop rack mounting things in your house, and get someone who knows structured cabling in there to help you pick some good cable, jacks, and the patch panels. I already told you about Ortronics and Berk-Tek. A clueful person could go from there.
Re:42U - Go Big or Go Home (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are custom building your house, why not go the extra distance and build a custom closet to house your rack? Place the rack on a platform with rollers and then attach the cables from above with enough slack that you can easily roll the rack out of the closet, do the work you need to do, and then roll it back in when done.
Don't forget to have good ventilation in the closet to vent out the heat. You might even want to run some of the air conditioning duct into the lower part of the closet to facilitate cooling.
Re:42U - Go Big or Go Home (Score:5, Insightful)
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:two RJ-45 per room (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick up and move? Temporary cables? Are you seriously trolling or what? I do multi gig transfers daily and mostly automatically. Streaming 1080p to multiple clients would completely saturate wifi and isn't feasible at all.
Yes there is wifi in my environment but the devices that don't move are hard wired.
Do it right (Score:4, Insightful)
Why mess with custom framing, etc., at all? If you have the means, just get a datacenter-class enclosure, and put it in the basement: http://www.werackyourworld.com/ [werackyourworld.com], and be done with it.
All of this guff about building this, that or the other thing? Screw that - it just adds to construction costs, and limits flexibility. A standard enclosure will suit all of your needs now, and in the future, won't ever require reconstruction, and you'll be guaranteed of future compatibility, since it's made to industry specs.
In addition, it will be accessible from all sides, assuming you place it so. And, if you have to, you can move it.
Every time I read about this issue on Slashdot, some idiot wants to proclaim how his "closet" solution is best. You don't want it in a closet, unless you want to have to deal with cooling. In a home, a basement is ideal to help cooling, and noise, and since you're building your home, you can do this, with appropriate planning.
Get an enclosure, put it it in your basement, with sufficient clearance all around, put in an overhead cable tray if you want to make it all pretty, and be done with it.
Regards,
dj
We did an office renovation (Score:4, Insightful)
We did some renovation work on our new office suite and since we had access to the bare walls, we did all the cat6 wiring ourselves. Here's what I came up with.
* The biggest recommendation I'd make is for you to install good conduits to all your rooms and rooms you might even *remotely* think about expanding network access to. Don't just staple your lines to the 2x4 since that makes it impossible to secure new line later. Factor in the bulk of the cat6 you're running through conduits and make sure you've got plenty of breathing room. You can usually muscle cables through with lubrication, but save yourself the aggravation of having the cable-pull slip off.
* Keep in mind the directions that you'll be pulling from and make sure that the cables can be pulled without snagging or going around sharp angles. We use angled joints in the appropriate direction for a pull.
* Leave pull cords/strings inside conduits to each outlet and secure both ends so they don't get pulled inside the conduit later. You'll be thankful later when you have to expand one outlet for your spouse's new printer.
* Label *both* ends of pull cords and strings.
Oh yeah, and future proof. Estimate high on outlet usage, use the latest cable standards (assuming it's still 6), and again don't be stingy running cable to rooms you don't think you'll need. If you don't run cable, at least run the conduit and pull-string for later. That Ethernet port might come in handy when you decide to put in a streaming set-top box in the kitchen.