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LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

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Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#171

Post by jacquesm »

slg wrote: post #169
inopinatus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hard to imagine someone stooping to this level of antagonistic misrepresentation because they disagreed with someone else’s preference for image hosting, but there it is. “two clicks of a mouse” - that’s a negative, not a positive, attribute. I’d rather not use a mouse, when possible. And yes, my S3 “workflow” is a very short shell script. are you actually interested in which user agent I use to access HN, or was tha…

Quoted post unavailable.

How about you read again what the GP wrote and then review your comment?

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#173

Post by tzartz »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #158

I prefer the minimalism of a "vertical rack" which, for some reason, I tend to never see. If you don't have more than 6U or so of equipment, it's really the way to go because of its minimal profile and amazing load-bearing ability: it is load-bearing parallel to the direction of gravitational pull (vs regular rack cabinets where the load is perpendicular to the posts), and then that weight is all redirected towards t…

Switches and routers sure- I've used it for things like that quite a bit- but I'd never put a server (even a 1U) in one. Ease of getting in and swapping parts is a huge factor.

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#174

Post by jacquesm »

uoaei wrote: post #161
Arubis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly don’t understand downvotes here. Imgur’s fine; S3’s fine; different people have different use cases. How is that contentious?

Downvotes are not for disagreement, they are for demoting off-topic or otherwise unhelpful conversational threads.

This is incorrect.

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#175

Post by UncleEntity »

lgbr wrote: post #150
gregmac wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the effort (and money) put into making a media server as quiet as possible (which is still not silent), I think you're way further ahead to just not put the server in your living room. Instead, put it in the basement/closet/garage/utility room -- somewhere you won't hear it. Then, broadly speaking, you have three options: A commercial box, like NVidia shield, Chromecast, Roku, Amazon Fire stick or AppleTV. Th…

I can't recommend the long HDMI (or HDMI-over-CAT5, or long Thunderbolt) enough. The noise isolation you can achieve by doing so is unbeatable. Even moving anything short of a 1U server into a neighboring closet means no perceptible noise, so you're really buying yourself more flexibility such that you can use almost any computer without thinking about noise constraints. Even more than that, I'll bet a lot of people…

Until your mom is flipping channels and gets to see what you really do in the basement all night…

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#176

Post by jacquesm »

paxys wrote: post #166

If you are really desperate, sure, but please don't trust thousands of dollars of hardware on a $10 cardboard table. Ikea furniture quality has been going downhill extremely fast.

Ikea oscillates in quality. Originally it was super good, then they had a cardboard period (1990's) and then when they started to be associated with 'painted cardboard' they upped their game and started to make quality stuff again (easily distinguished from the painted cardboard by the price). The last couple of years it has indeed been downhill and very rapidly so. I've found that a sharp tap on a part will tell you all you need to know, the cardboard will give and flex whereas the solid parts will hold up nicely.

The honeycombed structures are quite strong for their weight but not strong in absolute terms and you definitely don't want a book case made of that stuff.

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#177

Post by BeefWellington »

silicon2401 wrote: post #23

can somebody with more server/home server experience explain to me the benefit of going with a rackmount setup vs let's say, just building a second PC to use as a home server? I recently bought a house and am excited to get into home networking/home server work, but don't know anything about rack mount. Is rackmount equipment cheaper than regular consumer PC hardware?

Separately from what others are saying about used equipment being very inexpensive, which is all very true, I have a different take on why I do it.

I'm a gamer and upgrade my primary gaming machine on a much tighter cycle than a lot of other people, which means I have a fair bit of hand-me-down hardware around to pass along. Sometimes, instead of just selling/trading/giving my old stuff away, I'll stick the consumer-grade stuff inside my 4U rack boxes.

Basically, it comes down to customizability and the space to do what I want in it.

For example, my NAS server's case has 18 drive bays. With modern motherboards supporting NVMe, it's very doable to run the OS off NVMe, a couple of caching SSDs and an array that is 20TB+ large, and bonded 2.5GBe (maybe upgrading to 10 someday) to my VM Host machine. Most out of the box NAS systems don't do that.

My other server I use for hosting VMs and cracking hashes (not crypto, think password cracking) and has a few older GPUs in it to accelerate that task.

Nowadays a lot of consumer-grade CPUs have as many or more cores than older second hand server equipment, and often can run lower power (not always true). Plus putting it into 4U boxes means I can more larger fans so it's quieter than traditional aircraft-engine servers.

This is by some people's definition "doing it wrong" because I don't have ECC memory, etc., but the reality is I've been running it for years now and it's been very stable, with only one hardware failure over the course of the decade or so I've had this system together.

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#178

Post by stacktrust »

tzartz wrote: post #173
ComputerGuru wrote: post #158

I prefer the minimalism of a "vertical rack" which, for some reason, I tend to never see. If you don't have more than 6U or so of equipment, it's really the way to go because of its minimal profile and amazing load-bearing ability: it is load-bearing parallel to the direction of gravitational pull (vs regular rack cabinets where the load is perpendicular to the posts), and then that weight is all redirected towards t…

Switches and routers sure- I've used it for things like that quite a bit- but I'd never put a server (even a 1U) in one. Ease of getting in and swapping parts is a huge factor.

Is there a good source for short-depth sliding rack rails, or is the DIY route (drawer slides) recommended?

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#179

Post by whalesalad »

jacquesm wrote: post #170
whalesalad wrote: post #24

I have been really happy with the HEJNE shelf as a rack. Here are some 2U's here at home: https://s3.whalesalad.com/lab/rack.jpg The shelf: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/hejne-shelf-unit-softwood-s7903... I keep seeing full height Dell racks for sale on FB marketplace in the $200 range but haven't encountered the right manic episode to actually go for it.

It's not the rack that's the problem, it's the fans. Most industrial gear requires a ton of airflow and the noise is something like having a model jet engine sitting in your closet. This from someone who actually did go for it and later recanted.

Both of these R720's are barely audible when you are standing right next to them. They are in my basement furnace room too, so I literally cannot hear them anywhere else in the house.

Re: LackRack: IKEA's cheapest table is perfectly sized to rackmount computers (2020)

#180

Post by jacquesm »

whalesalad wrote: post #179
jacquesm wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the rack that's the problem, it's the fans. Most industrial gear requires a ton of airflow and the noise is something like having a model jet engine sitting in your closet. This from someone who actually did go for it and later recanted.

Both of these R720's are barely audible when you are standing right next to them. They are in my basement furnace room too, so I literally cannot hear them anywhere else in the house.

Is that running things on them full bore? I tried a server case with a bunch of 1080's in it for some image processing but the noise levels were off the scale even though they were fairly large diameter fans. Not R720's though, so larger fans. Interesting datapoint!

The worst offenders were the 1U units, such as routers and switches, and a bunch of Supermicro 1U servers.

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