Everything Else

Pontus wrote: I had to buy new legs though since the old ones were to short, but that was only about 3-400 dollars.

Raised floor looks impossible in my short basement where a tall rack would barely fit. I will screw cable trays on walls.

silicium wrote: Raised floor looks impossible in my short basement where a tall rack would barely fit. I will screw cable trays on walls.

I thought about a raised floor. Briefly. I think it's useful in two scenarios:

1) You want to access racks from all sides. I don't have the space for that. I have to pull my rack from the wall to access the back side but I don't expect this to happen often. Cables to/from the rack are bundles in a fat 'umbilical cord' to keep it tidy. This also means I can't reach the power switches (on the back of most equipment!), btw. I intend to solve this with a remotely operated PDU ( APC AP7951 or similar)

2) You have a very large room and need to cross it diagonally rather than go along the walls. This doesn't apply to me either: 15m CAT6 cables are only a couple of bucks more than e.g. 3 or 5m cables. I was lucky to buy a lot of 15m long FDDI cables for cheap too

The cable gutter is just my way to get the cables out of sight.

Right now I'm busy wiring the network. I have basic networking in the new room, and the server has been relocated. I have 4*CAT6 SFTP to the utility cabinet where the FTTH endpoint is, and the switch which distributes network to the rest of the house. When this house was constructed they installed telephone cables to the living room, and every bedroom on the first floor. I'm busy replacing this with two CAT5E cables per room (twice CAT6 SFTP doesn't fit in a 15mm pipe, and I want shielded cables). A major infrastructure overhaul I will be able to use these for networking, but also digital TV etc etc. Time will tell.

Had to suspend my work on the network last weekend because we had a small invasion of mice in the house. When the annex was constructed the pierced the walls in several places to pass electricity, heating and water through. They made some pretty big holes and it appears the mice found out about them. I've cemented all of them and trapped several mice (all, hopefully). In spring we're getting cats again.

jan-jaap wrote: I intend to solve this with a remotely operated PDU ( APC AP7951 or similar)

Kind of a cool unit. However, you can do the same thing with standard ol' home automation stuff and a Cisco router

The main reason for getting raised floor for me is the uneven floor. Here are some pictures of my slow progress:

http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/garage/

Pontus wrote: The main reason for getting raised floor for me is the uneven floor. Here are some pictures of my slow progress:

http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/garage/

What the heck is that thing that looks like a giant chiller unit?

Pontus wrote: The main reason for getting raised floor for me is the uneven floor.

We built something similar to this in my friend's ground floor (two story old house.) Did it with 2x10's and 3/4" exterior plywood, glued and screwed. Only took two days and was strong as hell.

The plan was to hit his wife in the head with a shovel and dump her under there, but the seventh fleet came to town and she disappeared so it wasn't necessary ...

vishnu wrote:

Pontus wrote: The main reason for getting raised floor for me is the uneven floor. Here are some pictures of my slow progress:

http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/garage/

What the heck is that thing that looks like a giant chiller unit?

Could you be more specific? You might be looking at the rear end of an 11/750

Pontus wrote: The main reason for getting raised floor for me is the uneven floor.

I had that problem in my garage, cement and a product called 'Egaline' took care of that. Then two coatings of epoxy paint and now it looks awesome.

Pontus wrote: Here are some pictures of my slow progress:

http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/garage/

I like it, but it looks like you have a lot of work to do still!

Pontus wrote:

duck wrote: Ooh, raised flooring... Expensive, no doubt?

Free actually It's used and quite ugly. I had to buy new legs though since the old ones were to short, but that was only about 3-400 dollars.

How much space do you need? I can't imagine you want to crawl underneath... I hope your place is rodent proof, because they will love it under there.

Another reason for me not getting a raised floor is that I don't want stairs at the entrance to my room. It would make moving big equipment in and out a lot harder too. One of the constraints of my building permit was that it had to be accessible to the disabled. So having it built with a lower floor (to have the raised floor at ground level) was not allowed.

Pontus wrote: Could you be more specific? You might be looking at the rear end of an 11/750

No, the thing with the copper pipes and the gauges...

jan-jaap wrote: I like it, but it looks like you have a lot of work to do still!

Sure do. I've done most of the floor now and I'm waiting for a plumber to come relocate some pipes. Then it's mostly finishing up around the edges

jan-jaap wrote: How much space do you need? I can't imagine you want to crawl underneath... I hope your place is rodent proof, because they will love it under there.

It's not really visible in the pictures but there is a concrete socle that runs around the room, I wanted the floor to go above that. I had the ceiling height to do it. The space underneath will only house some cables, a bit of plumbing and a secret stash of booze

jan-jaap wrote: Another reason for me not getting a raised floor is that I don't want stairs at the entrance to my room. It would make moving big equipment in and out a lot harder too.

This is a problem, but I'm making it possible to remove a section of the floor to put a small ramp there. This means four legs are not glued to the floor but stabilized against the rest of the floor with "stringers".

vishnu wrote:

Pontus wrote: Could you be more specific? You might be looking at the rear end of an 11/750

No, the thing with the copper pipes and the gauges...

Aha! that is the central heating for the rest of my house. I will put it in a small enclosure so that any leaks hopefully goes under the floor rather than all over my computers. (another reason for the raised floor)

Small update. I spent a good amount of time arranging infrastructure stuff (19" rack, switches, SAN stuff etc etc.) Now I can start putting in the wiring to the systems. Networking, fibre channel and the odd serial cable. So I've started to sort of move them towards their final place and build up the Ikea shelving system that will hold most of the workstations. The Ikea Broder series has been discontinued but I managed to get one second hand for a decent price.

I needed a PDU for my 19" rack and got a pair of APC AP7953's . One is in the rack, the other is under the floor behind the SGI desksides. This way I can (remotely) supply power to the desksides without using the breaker switches on the back of them. First of all, that's not what a breaker is for, second they are kind of hard to reach without moving the systems around. I will wire the workstations to the APC PDU as well. This way I can be sure no power is supplied to any system I'm not using. Most SGI's use anywhere between 5 and 20W of electricity when plugged in (even when powered down). If you've got 15 of them that starts to add up. This is better in terms of fire safety as well, as many of these systems are now 20+ years old.

I'll probably end up using 3 or maybe 4 shelves for the Ikea Broder rack. Put the Fuel and the Indigo2's underneath, Indigo's, Indys, Octanes, O2 etc. and some misc small SCSI gear on the shelves.

The panels of the 19" rack are against the back wall for now. That's roughly where the book cupboard will be for all the manuals. Above it is the drain for the airco.

Spec tac ular!

I've been following this thread since the beginning and I'm getting more jealous with every update

This room is going to be awesome.

I can't compete.

Holy crap, I wish I could stand in that room when you're finished. It would be a similar feeling to when I went to the California Extreme arcade games show

http://www.caextreme.org/

and just stood there soaking in all the powered up games and hearing all their sound effects.

I can't compete with Jan-Jaap, but anyway; I have more like a vertical setup.

Reminds me of when Groucho appointed Chico Secretary of War in Duck Soup and Chico says "I think we should have a standing army (because then) we save money on chairs"...

It's very inspiring to see your pictures. I haven't had much time to work in the garage. I'm halfway through putting up a new wall.

I've been eyeing the "broder" shelf system but I'm not sure about the grating. Will you put something smoother on top of that, to save on the computers rubber feet?

@jan-jaap: this is really really cool! If we Nekochaners ever do a user-group meeting - this would be the perfect place

@mia: Tezro + IBM T221 FTW!!

Thanks for all the kind words guys

mia wrote: I have more like a vertical setup.

I like it. What's that storage you've got there?

I can do vertical too, it's on the other side of the room I still have to wire (almost) everything and move the server. I reserved space for my Origin 350 (currently hosted at $WORK) too. The GS724T switches are the biggest you can buy without active cooling. Now if only I could shut up that bloody Silkworm, it is absolutely intolerable....

Pontus wrote: I've been eyeing the "broder" shelf system but I'm not sure about the grating. Will you put something smoother on top of that, to save on the computers rubber feet?

I didn't think of that beforehand. I've got one or two normal shelves (without the grating) but somehow they aren't very nice. I think I'll either put pads under the systems, or some sort of placemat on the self. We'll see.

Oh, and I finished the upgrades to the alarm system. Fire *and* burglary. I had the wires put in during construction, I just didn't have the time before to program the new zones into the system. No pets allowed in this part of the house, so the sensors are set to maximum sensitivity I'll just have to make sure the thermal footprint of the larger systems doesn't trigger the alarm