Data Center

At one point in my illustrious career, I was doing significant IT work for small businesses – configuring PC’s, networks, and servers. In this role, I collected, as I am a pack rat, scads of aging PC parts. During a “sabbatical” between contracts, this resulted in a flurry of eBay activity, followed by a MacGyver-esque build out of a basement data center.

The biggest purchase of the eBay shopping spree was two full-size racks. I purchased two because who gets by with only one rack? Actually, the shipping surpassed the cost of the a single rack and the cost to ship two was incrementally higher. In a related story, I paid $150 to have the rack shipped to my fathers bookstore – FYI, I did not do his web site – when I originally purchased the racks. My father recently received a bill for the shipping as the company never paid and had gone out of business. The intriguing thing was that the unpaid shipping bill was $67!!

One of the racks is in my garage and has been provisioned as an outdoor projection booth for showing drive-in style movies in the backyard. The other supports my data center (click on image at left for bigger picture). Lets take a quick tour -

A. 802.11g Wireless Router. It is wired to a full size antenna bolted to the basement ceiling, so that I can get a strong signal throughout the house. It actually gives me a pretty strong signal outside as well. I suspect my neighbor likewise gets a strong signal.
B. Cable Model. Standard issue. Hooked to the wireless so I can use my laptop “al fresco” (I hope that doesn’t mean “in the nude”). Although I have a home network, I run this on a separate segment, because my agreement with my service provider is that I not run multiple PC’s over the connection.
C. CAL. “CAL” is named after the used “California PC” rack mount box I picked up on eBay. It is a Windows Server 2003 and its current key roles are that of Tivo, Print, and File Server. I had actually used it as a PVR and wireless media server for a while but dumped that for the Tivo and a standard UHF transmitter. A CD burner and second hard drive are providing great value as they sit on top of it awaiting installation.
D. Elmer. “Elmer” housed in a used “Sniffer” rack mount box I picked up on eBay – hence the glue reference. It is a Windows 2000 Server and its current key role is that of development playground. It is running an assorted set of database and application server software. I used to rely on it more before I discovered VMWare, the ultimate development sidekick.
E. Old Crappy 17″ Monitor. However, I did get that nice matching (also old and crappy) rack mount monitor shelf for it. My goodness rack mount LCD screens are expensive – even on eBay.
F. Compaq Rack mount Keyboard with integrated Trackball. Okay, I was surprisingly excited about this eBay find. I purchased the pop-out drawer complete with the keyboard for about $50. I have it mounted low like that because with only one rack and plenty of space, it is easier to sit while working on it. Of course, when the data center grows…

G. IBM RS/6000. This is my AIX 5.1 server. I picked this baby up to fiddle around with IBM Websphere MQ and ramp up my AIX skills. My Unix skills are mostly Linux and I had never used AIX. I was into it for a while, but in my current role at Systems Flow it has fallen out of use. It has been so long since I booted it, that I don’t recall it’s name. One exciting possibility is the R/390 – I could add a Mainframe to the data center!!. Unfortunately, I believe this no longer manfactured card is in demand as I rarely see them on eBay. H. Dual PC TV Thingie. This is currently disconnected and being “monkeyed with”. It is an old system with dual independent motherboards, memory, and hard drives in it, but a shared power supply and no floppy or CD. I suspect it was part of an old hotel video streaming system as it has video outputs and some dedicated chips and was manufactured by Mitsubishi. It is pretty weak but I pumped up the memory and CPU as far as I could and run it as two Red Hat servers – Left and Right. I. Compaq Rack mount UPS. My wife demands high availability.

I also have an image of the back of the rack as there are a few components hidden there.

B1. Switching Hub – 100MB. I know, I know – 100MB?
B2. Compaq 8 port KVM. I love this – it was a long wait to get a slick one at a good price on eBay – but here it is!
B3. Power Strip. A must have!

Pros to running a personal data center