Home computer rooms

Mon Aug 15 00:06:07 UTC 2011

On 08/13/2011 08:26 AM, David Swafford wrote:
> I'm borrowing a room at mom's place for this presently :-D, as the 1
> bedroom apartment was a bit too small!

I've got a two bedroom apartment currently. Seriously considering a 3
bedroom place. So I can have a dedicated server room/office and a guest
room. Right now guest room serves as server room and living room is the
office.

> 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.

Nice. Another reason that apartments are annoying. Limited mods.
Though one could make the mods and just patch holes when they
leave. I wanted to drill a hole to the outside at my apartment and
patch when we left. The wife said no. LOL. It's cool though, cause
she doesn't bat an eye when I mention buying a 72U rack. :)

> Between the racks are 24-port patch panels for cross-connect needs.

Hmmm. Between racks you mean? Or from ports in wall to switch?

> 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.

Ah yes. Power. This is what will drive me to a colo. I'm sure of it. I
don't want to rely on household wiring for heavy duty
loads.

>   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. 

Excellent. This is what I do as well. Though the PDUs that I picked up
don't work with my current wiring. :(

> 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.

Nice.

> 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.

Perfectly suitable for a wide variety of applications. Only things worth
swapping out on a regular basis are drives.

> Connectivity from my apartment to the lab is over a site-to-site VPN.
What kind of bandwidth in between?

> 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.

Nice. I've not dabbled with Cisco voip at all. Just Freeswitch/Asterisk
(abandoned Asterisk and exclusively Freeswitch these days).

>   Production storage is on a QNAP NAS back at my apartment.

I believe this is the second mention of QNAP in this thread.

> 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.

Excellent idea. Do you have a ramp of some sort to bring gear in?

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