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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:38 Why?
01:45 Choosing the components
03:30 Transplanting the server
06:15 New hard drives
06:53 Rack tour
10:46 Outro
Mikrotik CRS326 mikrotik.com/product/CRS326-24G-2SplusRM PCIe Riser www.ebay.de/itm/133520571781 Short Cat.6 cables www.amazon.de/dp/B07GT6HNDB
That PCIe bifurcation riser sure is sexy. It could be my final push for moving to mini-ITX… if it didn’t cost as much as a motherboard.
Think you could add the desk legs to your affiliate link list? 🦵
where did u buy the case for the hotswap nas
Why you dont use lack rack from ikea? xD
Any chance we could get a model number or something for that PCIe Riser? That would be exactly what I need for my server project, however the eBay link you have previously provided is now a dead end.
Can't wait for next year's video, "I outgrew my 12U rack and upgraded to a 42U" :D
I’ve gone through multiple iterations of my home lab and I’ve had a 42u rack twice now and scaled back to half height racks 2 times and started with a half height rack. All that said I think it’s normal as things evolve in the lab for this to happen
Jeff Geerling is everywhere !!!
Any new raspberry Pi Nas ideas?
@@cezarywieczorkowski5642 My friend got one for like 30eur or something, local marketplace deal heh.
@@cezarywieczorkowski5642 Can you share some of these forums? Both from an educational and buyer perspective.
To anyone watching this: If you take a metal saw to your case, make sure to blow the dust out afterwards. Diligently! I know people who killed very expensive hardware through a short made with metal shavings. Fans will suck that stuff in and potentially blow it everywhere. Vacuuming with sensitive components inside might not be good idea, either, because electrostatic discharge. So if you have to vacuum, do it in the empty case or take the small risk, otherwise compressed air is less risky option.
Decades of vacuuming and never any static problems. Better than compressed air since that pushes dirt further in rather than getting it out. As for the metal bending & breaking it off is better, IF you need a saw just attach a Niob magnet (eg from an old harddisk) to the blade and it will keep the shavings in place
@@jfkastner yeah I never had a problem with vacuuming my PCs either, but there is non-anecdotal evidence (as in actual data from studies in enterprise systems) that says it's a problem. Given that modern hardware is pretty robust and ESD damage can be very subtle, gradual and intermittent, I thought I'd mention it. You might or might not have had problems years later without attributing them to the vacuum or hardware might just have gotten better since those studies. Who knows? I personally take the risk without problems, but would want people to make informed decisions. As a side-note, an air compressor to blow out the dust worked as well for me if not better than a vacuum. So hard disagree on that point. A compressor is just less convenient and ubiquitous. Canned air is way worse for actually getting dust out because low flow and pressure to that I would agree.
@@con-f-use I guess I agree with you mostly. Can you share any such studies you know about vaccuming and electrostatics? From my understanding there are vaccum cleaners that are electrostatic safe. They have earthed (grounded) brushed that are used clean the electronics. That way any charge build up is discharged to earth.
@@therealb888 Oh boy are we going far down a rabbit hole. Yes, there are shop vacuums that are low ESD. And yes, that is NOT because they don't produce charged particles but because their hoses, inter-connectors and dust compartments are grounded, so that if you sucked in something combustible, it won't be ignited through electrostatic discharge picked up through tribo-electricity on dust and those components because it is discharged before it sparks. I can see how ESD-save brush attachments to similar such vacuum might be ESD-save and pretty handy for electronics work. I've not seen such a thing in professional electronics shops. Quick googling tells me, there are indeed a number of such devices commonly used in the electronics industry. All that I have seen in electronics shops was compressed air, though. That and vacuum pick-up systems for moving components, parts and circuit boards. So they are a thing, and probably for good reason, but probably not that widely used, at least not in my part of the world. And the fact that they exist and that there are air compressors but hardly any non-ESD-save vacuums would support the claim that vacuuming poses at least some danger from ESD. As to the source, I don't have it at hand, sorry :*( It was cited and linked to in a Linus Tech Tips video, probably the collaboration vid with electroboom on ESD, but not sure. I was also told about those papers, when I interned at a manufacturer of industrial laser printers back in the mid 2000 and remember a designer of the infamous thinking machines mentioning they had to move the air vents from the bottom to the middle because of ESD from cleaning crew vacuums in their prototype labs. So it's an old tale if there ever was one. All I wanted to say is: if you vacuum your expensive electronics, and they malfunction afterwards, don't blame old me and my comments. :D
He could have just bent it left and right till the metal part snaps off, no need for a saw.
Amazon sells short 6" extension cords that you can use to move the power bricks out and away from the power strip, thereby making each outlet available.
A wild Dave appears
There's also the option to get a power strip with only IEC C13 sockets. Usually they have a lot more since it's more compact, and you can connect servers and lots of appliances directly to them. And for stuff that uses regular mains plugs, Amazon has also tons of IEC C14 to whatever plug you use in the country (usually made to be used with UPSes).
8:12 Just for anyone that is thinking of taking this advise; keystones need the same exact punch down tool to terminate them properly. What I will say is that keystone patch panels are nice because they are very modular and you can get keystones for HDMI, USB, ect. not just ethernet.
Only if you get that style of keystone; You can also get slightly more expensive pass-through keystones that have an RJ45 socket on either side so you just plug a regular pre-terminated cable into the back of it.
The CAT6A keystones I use don't need a punch down tool. They come with a plastic part you clip the cables into, then you press that piece into the back of the keystone. Requires a lot of force, as the plastic part punches down all eight wires at once.
There are a lot of keystones that don't need punch down tool. The "punch down" functionality is build in this modules. Just read the manuals before you buy this modules.
Thanks for walking us through your HomeLab. I'm working on creating my own, so it's nice to see what others have done. Makes me know that better is possible.
As a sysadmin, I loved this! Great to see people adapt entreprise gear for home use.
Why should a home user adapt enterprise gear at home? Isn't enterprise gear made for enterprise?
I hope you are a real starlink admin! because it's great to see enterprises adopt opensource for their consumer facing gear / service. Referring to the use of openwrt on starlink routers
I've wanted to do my own homelab setup for a long time, but since I started working for an MSP and working with this stuff on a daily basis I've been even more interested in doing something better with my home setup.
@@Beni9819 It comes down to what you want to do. In some cases you may not really get a huge advantage from using enterprise networking equipment. But you will get more control over your network, and you will get better security. When was the last update for my consumer grade router? Never. Yikes! With news of routers getting turned into botnet serving networks, security is one big one. You may not use a bunch of the fancier enterprise functions, like you probably aren't going to be setting up a site-to-site VPN. But even if you just want a bit more control than you have now going with an enterprise level firewall will be much more powerful. Next comes down to what kind of environment you are in. For a 1 bed 1 bath apartment, yeah, you don't have much room, and you likely don't need more than 1 access point. In my house it's a two story with a basement. So having 1 access point per level is a goal of mine. I presently have two consumer grade routers, one acting as a router, and the second one set up as just an access point. But connections are finnicky all around. One of these days when my budget will allow I want to get 3 Unfi APs and set them up. I do have ethernet wiring on each level, so it shouldn't be too difficult to set it up once I have the equipment. It's going to give me APs that are easily managed, updated, and mesh better than my janky two disparate routers setup that competes for connection, and the one acting as an AP just decides to randomly go out on me. In the end, do you need to use enterprise equipment at home? No. And if you're not really into networking you probably aren't going to get anything better than buying a consumer grade mesh system. But if you want to do things like run your own server, or any other advanced home networking it might be worth it to do. But everyone has different needs, wants, and level of knowledge and skill. Pick what works best for you.
@@andmicbro1 Thank you for your detailed explanation. I totally agree with you. If somebody wants to get experience in enterprise hardware but does not have a work place where he is allowed to learn it, it's a great alternative to learn it at home with the added benefit of the family having a quite good Wi-Fi🙂
Loved it! Amazing to see how you adapted enterprise hardware, made decisions based on your requirements and adapted it for your use case (like the one with the PSU and fans for quieter operation and so on)! Keep it up!
7:38 I have a bunch of cable tv boxes that I program for work and had this problem. The way I solved it on my rack was to use my POE switch to power devices with huge bricks. You can buy POE splitters for the correct voltage (and a barrel jack converter) and just use that to power the device and provide networking as well. Might be worth giving it a try.
I have a couple of old Supermicro chassis I might have to modify like this! Nice! Definitely get a UPS next though - it’s worth it to allow your server to gracefully shutdown during an outage and also allows you to monitor power usage from it. I have mine feeding an influx db and display through grafana to track daily costs and yearly projections for energy expenses.
I literally spent over 10 hours yesterday searching for info to get a 3U ATX hot-swap rackmount case for a build I am planning. I can't understand why these are so hard to come by. Thanks for your video. Back to my depressing search.
I have built small enclosures from Ikea sideboard cabinets for systems - one was in a mate's living room, he wanted to keep all of his kit out of the way and out of sight. He has two servers, a Pi with drives hanging off it, power boards, cabling, cable modem, router and a tertiary remote workstation that runs headless. We put together a small cabinet (this is a sideboard so about waist height) and we left the back off entirely. The idea was to dissipate heat - the back is up against the wall with just enough gap to let heat out and cables run up to a TV, etc. The doors on the front close easily. Overall solution - works a TREAT. Super-cheap, wildly civilises the room and cuts down noise quite a bit. Also heat is not a problem (he's in the sub-tropics and it is frequently mid to high 30ss in there, haven't had a single issue even with all systems fully on). Also found that dust wasn't an issue either - as most case suck air from front to back it tended not to be able to get much in dust-wise through the front doors. The whole thing is on little legs so its' off the ground by perhaps six inches (standard for the cabinet). Indeed the only mods we made to the cabinet were leaving the back off (just not installing it when putting it together, it wasn't structurally required) and also some screws inside on one side to mount a power board up for neatness. I personally do this though I was stupid and put the back on mine (I'm in the UK so it's a bit cooler than the other setup). I want to remove the back on mine - I have three servers (2x HP Microservers and a mITX Intel Zeon mini server) as well as a hardware intel based firewall, a Pi with a stack of drives, switches, messy cabling and even a laptop in a dock missing its screen and keyboard that I use as a processing box (wake it with WOL packet and use it to chomp on files, it's running Debian and it's making use of bits of a T420 I had lying around). Because of the back my heat situation isn't as good but the noise and dust situation is brilliant; it's hard to hear the servers except when I wake them, they're storage tanks so they're powered off most of the time. I think this solution idea is very much worthy of a look for anyone who has systems, switches, cables, power boards, SBCs, you name it - floating around and cluttering a room while producing noise and sucking in dust.
Love the server build. I repurposed a Juniper WXC chassis long ago in the same way, junk out, power reduction splitter for the fan to shut it up, pico power supply in, rotating drives out, SSD in. It was built on a supermicro motherboard which was the only thing saved. Cool quiet, low power. 👌 All the cool kids are doing unifi, pffft. There are equally serviceable and far more inexpensive not to mention interesting options and you seem to be all over that. Other worthwhile hacks, keystones as you said and rack studs rather than cage nuts.
Since I’m also in the process of moving my home lab to a rack this video was extremely helpful.
Nice video. Homelabing a rack in a compact space can be difficult. My old house had some large unfinished spaces in the basement so a 42U rack was no problem. I decided I wanted to use network rack in a closet for the new house. That has limited cases choices as I have just under 17" deep of space. I also wanted 2 optical drives. So I have a non-optimal case. When Zen4 comes out I will probably move my 5900x from my desktop to the ASrock Rack x570 board in the server and hopefully moving to a better case.
:-D Mate, server integrator here, and it does not hurt! On the contrary! In work I don't really care about noise, and rarely we build our servers. Warranty and support are king. But I still need my home server, for which I accept no noise. I am in the process of selling all tech I have, and start from scratch again. Jepp. ;-) Thanks again!
The timing on this video couldn't have been better for me, my home server just broke. Thanks for all the information!
Looks amazing! Great video mate 😉
I have been wanting to build a home server like this for a while. Glad it isn’t as crazy an idea as i thought.
This is genius idea - instead of noisy 1U enclosures, simply go 2-3U!!! Thanks for the tip!
Thank you for another great video, Wolfgang!
One of the best channels on KZhead and I watch a lot of this niche.
That´s a honest build. I liked it.
Just finished building the same rack from StarTech; I love it.
I'd look at making a custom 3d printed bracket to adapt the current mounting posts to 120mm sizing.
Loved it! Thank you for the video!
I got the "Millenium SR-2012" rack at Thomann (Yes, the music store!) for 125,- EUR. For me it was the best choice as I didn't need adjustments in depth and wanted to have a closed rack.
Great vid! I just finalized my homelab just missing a UPS houses my unifi dream machine SE network controller, patch panel, rackmounted pc and refurbished dell power edge r720. Its lean my dream machine SE handles the network and it ships with 8 poe ports which powers all my unifi cameras. Super happy with it!
Hey, that's still great and your video has definitely spurred me on to buy a 4 port 2.5GB nic and put that in my second PC to turn that into a replacement router.
Another nice video! Considering how you upgraded the home server over time, I think in the not so far away future the rack is going to get only prettier and more useful. З.Ы.: what;s in your opinion better for home infrastructure experiments and delving into self-hosting: a cluster of RPi's or VMs on an old general-purpose PC?
Server cooling fans can mostly be PWM controlled using an external controller to override the BIOS - I have done this with several HP servers using the original motherboards, PSUs, and fans and can get the sound down to a low level while still keeping the components well within acceptable levels (there was some rewiring of fan headers needed to trick the BIOS into thinking the fans were working at full speed)
Great video. I have a question, I have an unraid server and I'm thinking about using home assistant there as a vm or on an Intel nuc. Does that make any difference at all?
Next video better gonna be called: "How i sold my soul to the energy market to keep my server rack running" :D
Jokes aside, my entire rack consumes less than a typical desktop PC 😉
Hey do you work for Amazon? I feel a sales pitch coming on. The 2U server case will house an ATX 12V power supply with an 80 PLUS Gold Certified Energy rating. Not only that but newer motherboards feature smart fan technology which allow a huge energy cost savings.
@@WolfgangsChannel a typical desktop PC? Which typical desktop PC is turned on 24/7?
@@MRcRaZyByTe What is your favorite way to measure power consumption on your systems? Data?
@A. I turn my main server off for the night, which helps reduce the energy cost. Let's say a desktop PC is used for the full work day (8 hours) and consumes 120W on average. Keep in mind, that's very optimistic, considering that a lot of the modern GPUs and CPUs can consume upwards of 300W each. My rack consumes around 50W, and is on for 16 hours a day. Keep in mind, I'm not including essential functionality like WiFI or routing in this calculation, because you need those things regardless of whethert they're racked or not. 120W * 8 hours = 0.96 kWh 50W * 16 hours = 0.8 kWh
I think it would be great to see your workspace
Awesome build. What I would do differently is only the power strip. I would of gotten a surge protector power strip. Other then that not bad at all. Soon you will be like me and out growing that rack to an larger one. Unless you are not planning on adding more to your rack.
Nice video, I just used my old midi tower and stuffed everything into it but this looks much better
Thanks for this. I've been lucky enough to be given a Dell PowerEdge R210 II for starters and got a Dell PowerEdge T410 with 32Gb RAM for $50 AUD (Around $34 US) and a Dell PowerEdge R620 with 2 CPUs and 88Gb RAM for $160 AUD (Around $107 US) on an impulse (or chance) buy. I'm also in touch with a guy that can get me used 6TB SAS drives. I've learned a lot from this video on what can be done and what NOT to do 😅. I'm patiently waiting for a used server rack/cabinet to appear on marketplace but all I see are full sized data centre cabinets that won't fit in my little Toyota Corolla
One note, though you might have found out already: The old 10G switch, just reboot it into SwOS and it is similar to the new switch. As for keystone panels, I tend to use Deltaco's pan-202 bundle kit (panel and 24 Cat 6A keystones), but I fear it might have been discontinued.... However their pan-113 and pan-214 are not too expensive, sadly they are without the keystones though.
Great video and a decent setup! Not bad at all.
I built a rack mount server using a Chenbro RM42300 case. Its short enough (465mm) that it fits inside an IKEA platsa cabinet that I've modified with server rails, and it has modular sections at the front that allow the installation of hot swap bays. I bought the rack rails from a music shop and just mounted them inside my IKEA cabinet to create a custom integrated server rack.
That’s a great idea!
Oohh new video missed you man Really glad you're getting sponsored too now
FYI, they make short extension cable dongles for this exact reason. shouldn't have a prob finding 8-12" extension packs for around $3-4 a piece. Very common in the enterprise space for this reason.
sweet, nothing wrong with it !! Your rack, your build.
LoL!!!! This is freaking brilliant!!! Exactly what I need!
Interesting choice to have it in the office. How's is the sound with the hard drives always spinning? While messy I still think it looks super clean!
Don't worry about the Noctua Fans and how you mounted them. I did the exact same thing and it works just as well. If it works, it works, haha
Looks nice! Gut gemacht!
Great, Thanks for the info!
nice build mate!
Dope. Very inspiring!
Love these types of videos so much
Even though I won't do this, this was a pleasant watch.
I build the naked racks in my fab shop just built one last week for a radio station they use the the server cases that are about half as deep as that one is .
great video! always nice to see other people building racks! and your video is extremely well made. one thing, though... I think your startech rack is assembled the wrong way. the front lower part seems to be mounted too much towards the front and won't support all the weight you throw at it. might wanna disassemble it when you have the time, and put it back correctly :)
Thanks for the tip!
Parabéns, ficou ótimo.
Nice work @Wolfgang's Channel! I need server for Home Assistent, NextCloud, BitWarden, Flex and more one or two options, what machine do you suggest with low consumption and not too expensive? Thanks!
Thanks for your sharing
I hope the growth of home labs pushes the industry to make more rack mount equipment that is quiet and power-efficient straight out of the box...designed specifically for home and office use instead of just data centers. Obviously, data center servers still have their place, but not everyone who uses a server is putting that server in a place where noise doesn't matter.
Nice setup. What about managing dust? Can't you just install the dust screen on all open sides of the rack cabinet?
Nice Rack 😉 TrueNAS is awesome and you should definitely give it a try. How about mounting the Pi-KVM directly in the Rack or in your Server-Case? If you know someone with a 3D-Printer, there are a lot of adapters online. 😅 I printed a Pcie slot bracket one so i can mount it in any PC/Server Case.
Still waiting for BliKVM PCIe 😁 pipci.jeffgeerling.com/boards_cm/blikvm-pci-express-card.html
@@WolfgangsChannel Oh that thing looks awesome. Thanks for sharing. ^^
@@WolfgangsChannel omggg this looks amazingggg shame rpi compute modules are basically unobtanium at this point ;_;
Outstanding man
Thumbs up, I also ended up using rack-mount server case after years of using some random sorta-fancy looking PC case (HTPC to be more precise). The only question I got is - have you checked your PSU before switching it to consumer-grade one? I use CSE-745BAC-R1K23B-SQ case with stock full-sized PSU and yet I have replaced the fans with silent ones - the PSU turned out to be at least as silent, if not more, as most of the consumer PSU's
Шикарно, то что нужно!
There are a lot of newer Supermicro server chassis that can be found on ebay in Germany, I recently got SC826 12 bay chassis for €200 and redid it into JBOD, it had quite fans, quite power supply. I also have SC743 chassis where I replaced fans with SuperMicro quite version, and upgraded power supply to quite version as well, SuperMicro have quite friendly components =) They also have front panel breakout cable CBL-0084L, it's around €8.
Very nice! Will definitely look into that as my storage array expands
@@WolfgangsChannel I can give you list of official parts for the whole assembly and where I sourced them within European Union, took a month but I was able to get it all for significantly less than the price of a JBOD listings for same configuration
For the sake of my wallet, I don't think I should know 😁
Good video sir ! Keep them coming !
I'd say give TrueNAS a try. I've been using it for a bit in an old upgraded Optiplex 7010 and have been enjoying it so far as a Plex server and general-purpose NAS.
Great video. Question I have would be: I have a sturdy 18U 19 inch rack with 2 solar batteries at 48v taking up 6U, is it bad for computer devices to be near these batteries/cables?
What brand and model was your original case? That is exactly what I am looking for!
Streacom DA2
what tool did you use for the budget list at the beginning of the video?
Notion
😬on punching down patch cables using a screw-driver! You've gotta test those connections!
Ich mag dein homelab. echt super.
S920 is superslow for Homeassistant, loads gui slow if you have a large dashboard (like dwains 3.0), compiles esphome devices even slower...
Vikingo y artesano paciente. Lloro. 🙋♂️👏
For the patch cables you can just use 1' cables and loop them a few times and Velcro them to look pretty and not be a rats nest.
/r/homelab would be so proud of you!
That's so freakin clean man...I wanna eat spaghetti off it
So if not using ZFS. I really liked your video "What's on my NAS homeserver" and decided to replicate it. Is it worth the trouble or I should just grab TrueNAS or UnRaid?
Really nice!
Very cool keep it up and thanks
"It will hurt" JOKES ON YOU IM INTO THAT SHIT! lol
Hey wolfgang, thanks for the video. Very informative, but do you have a motherboard+cpu recommendation i can actually buy? Cant find the ones from this video anywhere gr thijs
Saw your wall wart problem. Are Euro-spec power squids available? These are the best things ever for rack-mounted ups.
Nice but one litle thing, if not wall mounted it coud be good to put it on a platform. 40 to 50 cm up makes wonders for dust ingress...
nice explanation
wolfgang cast "psychic damage"! it's super effective!
As far as the power strip I would suggest pigtails and maybe a shelf.
Yea, I bought a shallow rack by accident, too. It's OK, I'll replace it; I'll just have to find ways to fill them both.
nice project.
Do you think it would be a good idea to use that server rack for someone new to this field? What I want to put into it are two 2U units and a switch min
that 3u case is nice but god damn its more expensive then actual hardware including HDDs in my current NAS
Hey Wolfgang, could you maybe do a video about your network setup with the dmz, vlans, smarthome network etc.? I would be really interested in that.
I'm a systems integrator for small businesses and I approve of your choices
1:51 Is that the OSRS hop worlds sound? Hopping worlds rn and this vid threw me off, sounds identical.
need that setup tour 2.0
Great looking system! I just picked up a 12u rack but it's a short depth type and finding appropriate hardware has been less than easy. Especially a case for my main server pc thats 4u, less than 13" deep and doesn't cost a billion dollars. Probably going to build one...
You mention optimizing for noise and power consumption. I'd be interested on hearing about the things you investigated. I'm looking to build something similar, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to identify what parts means lower power consumption and noise. In particular, I'm not sure how to evaluate CPUs across generations and brands or if motherboard selection matters.
Hey. This spreadsheet has been very helpful: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LHvT2fRp7I6Hf18LcSzsNnjp10VI-odvwZpQZKv_NCI/edit#gid=0 It's being maintained in this thread on a German forum www.hardwareluxx.de/community/threads/die-sparsamsten-systeme-30w-idle.1007101/ It turns out that Fujitsu motherboards in particular are very power efficient. That and most energy efficient systems are usually powered by PicoPSU
I was looking to buy another rack and it was double the cost of the one i bought 2 years ago. Crazy
Could we get a more in-depth walk-through of everything working together starting from the ISP through your router and so on and the services you use?
i mean ... a dremel could fix the problem with the rails / needing to unlatch the top cover and lifting it before pulling out the server right? if you gonna go jank, you go all the way.
I would just go to a building supply store and buy some perforated steel angles, bolts, washers, nuts and some dolly caster wheels. You could make the sides, top and bottom from sheet metal or acrylic.