NANOGers home data centers - What's in your closet?
Jeffrey S. Young
young at jsyoung.net
Sat Aug 13 04:22:39 UTC 2011
On 13/08/2011, at 11:08 AM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org> wrote:
> Beyond that, a nice home file server, rsynced to something in a
> real data center each night. This a combo of backup plus high speed
> access no matter which side of the home connection you are on. I
> currently use a PC I built myself, which is good, but I would like
> something that uses less power. I'm looking hard at a Mac Mini
> "server", with an external RAID (perhaps 2x3TB drives, RAID 1) as
> I think it will draw even less power, but I'm not sure yet.
>
> You might notice a trend with me, low power, which means low heat
> output and long runtime on UPS, fanless so no noise, small footprint.
> Gotta have GigE to every room wired for desktops, printers, cameras,
> TV's, playstations, etc. Netgear 5 port switches are awesome,
> lifetime warranty, small, cheap.
>
> The holy grail I'm searching for now? A GigE switch with POE,
> unmanaged is ok, and probably preferred from a price perspective;
> but with NO FAN.
We moved overseas and power/space/cooling is harder to provide so
out with all of the rack-mount gear, in with the efficient and small stuff.
I had a 42U rack at home full of various kit that I'd collected.
Much of the rack mount went to work where I've squirreled it in to a
closet and use it to archive my mail -- much cleaner solution than the
crap (Exchange with mandatory automated archiving) that IT provides.
@home:
X-Serves running OS X Server became Mac Mini's without much fuss.
Rackmount Cisco 35xx's became 3560's (fan less) and I added a small
Netgear GigE switch. Moved away from the Nokia IP380 running pFsense
and back to a Soekris. By far my favorite addition was a used QNAP
from Ebay. 6 Bays - holds 4 x 2TB drives currently and has my movies,
music, laptop backups, family pictures, and so forth... QNAP client for
the iPad has saved many a fight over the TV.
Still working on the Asterisk server to power the VoIP phones -- moving
from a 4U rack mount intel to a dedicated G4 mac mini. Also bought
a Intel Solo Mac Mini for cheap and upgraded the processor to a 2.33Ghz
Intel Duo -- fun project and dedicated the box to PLEX in the media
center.
jy
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