I’ve got a bunch of rackmount servers in my rack at home right now. All cool, but the rack is full… so no more upgrades 😉 Unfortunately a 4U and 3 2U’s with a total of 7 CPU’s (+fans), and 16 hard drives produce a lot of heat and noise, while kicking up our electricity bill. I’ve also got a 12-port gigabit switch and a 24-port 10/100 switch running and a few cisco 2500’s for tests and play 🙂

So in order to downsize this a bit the plan is to keep the cisco’s (they don’t produce a lot of noise or heat nor do they use a lot of power), replace both switches by one 24-port gigabit switch, keep one 2U box as router, replace the rest of the machines by one big badass 4U box containing all the remaining hard drives, and add a UPS.

I’ll have some leftover hardware at that point, perhaps I’ll sell some of it… or I can reuse it later without having to buy new stuff.

I’ve just bought the UPS (New 2U APC 1400VA for 150 €, not too expensive I think?), have a switch ready for me when I get some cash together, and then when I’ve got some more cash I’ll get the 4U Supermicro case and a 5-in-3 SATA hotswap tray set… In total the box can contain 15 disks (if I put in 2 more SATA 5-in-3 mobile racks). Expensive hobby this is.. but hopefully it’ll reduce power bills, heat AND noise…

I’d also like 2 19" TFT monitors one day.. Samsung Syncmaster 920n for example 😉 

Someone win the lottery and donate me some cash… :/ 

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