Home computer rooms

Sat Aug 13 13:26:50 UTC 2011

I'm borrowing a room at mom's place for this presently :-D, as the 1
bedroom apartment was a bit too small!

It has 2 racks -- a 2post and a full server cabinent.  The racks are
physically on separate sides of the room, so I've got a custom cable
tray running along the walls, that's about a foot below the ceiling.
Between the racks are 24-port patch panels for cross-connect needs.

Power is the fun part:  I installed a 50AMP, 240V, subpanel in the
above room (with permits/inspection), and am feeding 1 x 240 to each
rack and also 1 x 120 to the 2-post.  Each rack's power is handled by
remotely managed power controllers.  I've found that maintaining UPS
batteries became too expensive, given the age and present value of my
gear, so everything is direct w/o UPS support.  Since I've got full
power control, most of the gear remains off until I'm actively using
it for studies. To conserve electric use, I rarely use additional AC,
though I have a portable unit in the room for when the need arises --
average temp runs about 85 in that room.

The routing gear is a mix of Cisco 2600s, 3600s, and 4500s (yep, those
are a little old!); The switching gear is a mix of Cisco 3550s, 3560s,
and 2950s; The server gear is mostly IBM xSeries, in the age range of
about 5-7 years old.

Connectivity from my apartment to the lab is over a site-to-site VPN.
I've also got a Cisco call manager express (on a 1760) running my
mom's phone service and have phones throughout her house and my
apartment.  Production storage is on a QNAP NAS back at my apartment.

The above room is about 180 square feet.  It sits next to the garage
and kitchen, and to make it look more official I took out the door and
replaced it w/ a plastic doorway like you see in big grocery freezers.
 The plastic made it easier to get in/out with gear without scratching
up the house and it also helps mute out some of the fan-noise.

David.

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Charles N Wyble
<charles at knownelement.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> Related to my thread about home data centers, what are folks using to
> store compute gear in?
>
> Mine sits in two racks in my second bedroom. Cooled by ambient AC.
>
> Has anyone built a dedicated room? What resources did you use to do so?
> Are their any standards to reference etc?
>
>