First Server Cabinet for Home

[NachT]

Hey all,

We've reached the point of needing a server cabinet for the home. I've never purchased a rack/cabinet before, so apologise for the nooby questions! I'm just looking for some pointers and suggestions.

The largest thing to go in the cabinet will be a HP DL380 G6. It measures in at 690mm in depth (if I include the rails which stick out from the back a bit, it's 750mm in depth).

Because this particular server is so large, I'm not quite sure on what dimensions to go for on the cabinet. I've been looking at a 800mm depth cabinet, but noticed the description read "The internal racking depth is 130mm less than the external depth."

What width/depth should I be going for? And does anyone have any recommendations for a cab? I'm looking for a 21U.

Side Question: The house is currently being cabled with Cat6a, do I specifically need a Cat6a patch panel, i.e. if I grabbed a generic RJ45 patch panel, even if it was marked at Cat5, this shouldn't cause any issues?

 

[On Holiday]

 

[bremen1874]

Why spend the money on Cat6a cabling if it isn't going to be Cat6a end-to-end?

It'll likely work, but only because you probably aren't doing anything that needs better than Cat5e in the first place.

 

[NachT]

Thanks woody, I'm probably going to play it safe and go for a 900mm depth cabinet.

Bremen, my crazy thinking behind it was basically; I know the higher grades of cat cable performing better at longer distances, i.e. you'd probably get 10Gb/s through CAT5 if the cable was short enough, so applied the same logic to the patch panel/connectors, and thought to myself if it's literally just a connector, does it even matter? i.e. what's the actual difference between the cat5 and cat6a patch panels, or is it just a marketing thing..

 

[Avalon]

This thread reads like a car crash. How can you claim to be concerned about 10Gb (perhaps you forgot to mention the stately home spread over a few acres) but don't have even the most basic grasp of what you're doing, who says 'it's just a connector' and 'does it even matter?' Someone who's running a G6 and wants 21U to rack a 2U dinosaur, a 1u patch panel and a 1u switch.

Stop, sit down and work out what it is you think you want and why. Before saving any more hardware from landfill, work out what the ongoing costs are and what you need to buy to achieve what you need. Because right now, it reads more like you could save a lot of time, money and space as well as get a load more performance for a lot less power by ditching the G6 and getting an appropriate sized cabinet. I ask this knowing several people who did exactly what you are doing now, because the bits were 'cheap' or 'free', what they eventually realise is that the running costs per year are horrific and an efficient build (rack based or otherwise) makes way more sense. Normally that's after they've filled the rest of the rack with yet more inefficient crap.

The only time something like a G6 makes sense is when it's free and you either don't pay/care about power (solar?) or really hate the person who does pay the power bill, or the colo provider includes it.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Why do you need a server cabinet for the home? What’s your plans? What are you running and why? How much money do you have to spend on this project?

 

[jackboy]

You may not want to hear it but these guys are giving you good advice. I allowed my son to run a R510 in my garage, it was free, it cost over £150 per month to run. Let’s just say it’s not there now..........

can not remember exactly what we had before but it was bigger!

We replaced with something less sexy but it works better and costs way less.

 

[KubyNeeTees]

Reminds me sometimes of the 'labs' I see listed on /r/homelabs.

Because you know, it's 'enterprise stuff', right?

I once upon a time had a lab, half rack, 'enterprise' kit (including a full blown NetApp and a few trays).

What I have now? A few Pi's and a pair of A300 minis running VMware. As others have said, take a step back and think about what you are doing. The amount of money I see spunked on 'home labs', with 10GB here and there, ridiculous.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

spunked

What's the matter with spunking money up the wall?

 

[Caged]

Just to add another voice to the idea that you don’t need to run enterprise server hardware at home - it’s the software that matters and there’s really no point learning what Dell or HPE hardware is like since if you’re at the point in your career where you have a home lab then chances are that another team handles physically racking the kit you spec on your projects anyway.

I really doubt anybody has home lab requirements that can’t be met with a decent tower case and an Asrock/Supermicro board, and it will be a lot quieter, burn less electricity and chuck out much less heat.

 

[sja360]

Sometimes buying a rackmount server is actually a lot cheaper. I get there's the whole it's costing in electricity but that's each person's choice.

Personally you guys should be focused on helping the OP with the original question first, sure you could put little tip / help that by running it may cost you in electricity compared to a low power tower setup.

I personally am going from a synology ds212j from 2010/2011 to a dell R710 rackmount with 24gb ram, 2x3tb sas, 2x 5640L (6C/12HT each).
I understand the synology uses about 15-25w max. The rackmount hits about 150w with fans at full takeoff speed. On idle about 100w.
That cost £150. Compared to the synology which was like £300-400 with a 3tb wd red at the time.

I felt the need to post because it could be me posting in this forum subsection and it's a shame we've focused on the server choice usage rather than the original question.

Your right Caged, we probably don't need all those cores etc, but if you get more for less then you feels it's worth it.

 

[Avalon]

Even at 100w - which feels slightly optimistic as I seem to remember 150w idles, but it depends on spec/VM’s etc. - that’s £115ish/yr on power (13.06p/Kw) or £170ish using my 150w figure. Chuck actual load on that and you’re looking at 200w+ easily with a few idle VM’s. As you don’t generally buy a server like that to idle, once it starts doing anything that’s likely to be £200-300/yr on power no matter how you look at it. That sort of annual power spend + initial purchase cost + rack/rails would buy you a much more efficient used Ryzen that would outperform an R710 and save you money year on year with minimal loss of functionality.

To counter your suggestion of it could be you posting, if you were doing something that was poorly thought out and reasoned, wouldn’t you prefer someone to point out why it was a bad idea so at least you thought about it rather than sitting back and watching you dig yourself into an even bigger hole? I certainly would, the people I know who have done similar things to what op is suggesting aren’t exactly extolling the virtues of doing so either.

 

[sja360]

To counter your suggestion of it could be you posting, if you were doing something that was poorly thought out and reasoned, wouldn’t you prefer someone to point out why it was a bad idea so at least you thought about it rather than sitting back and watching you dig yourself into an even bigger hole? I certainly would, the people I know who have done similar things to what op is suggesting aren’t exactly extolling the virtues of doing so either.

Your quite right and I agree, probably should have posted, but I suspect the suggestion would result in suggesting a desktop/tower unit. Which if I put a sensible hat on, is the right system upgrade from a synology/qnap package, as I now see those units as very expensive compared to standalone. But they have advantages, ie easy setup, low power usage.

 

[Avalon]

Your quite right and I agree, probably should have posted, but I suspect the suggestion would result in suggesting a desktop/tower unit. Which if I put a sensible hat on, is the right system upgrade from a synology/qnap package, as I now see those units as very expensive compared to standalone. But they have advantages, ie easy setup, low power usage.

If it fits the bill, then yes, that’s probably what would have made most sense and been suggested, the other go-to being the Microservers as they provide a small form factor storage orientated package for bugger all, but you knew that already. Power users tend to get directed to early Ryzen as it’s both power efficient and packs a lot of punch for bigger all outlay with a clear upgrade path.

People are drawn to Synology because it’s perceived as an easy option, in reality the intel based Synology stuff is just an over priced PC with (admittedly improved) planned software obsolescence built in. Better free/paid software options exist and you can build/buy something better and cheaper that have the same power envelope and can easily be upgraded inexpensively as/when your needs change or something breaks.

 

[Rroff]

You may not want to hear it but these guys are giving you good advice. I allowed my son to run a R510 in my garage, it was free, it cost over £150 per month to run. Let’s just say it’s not there now..........

can not remember exactly what we had before but it was bigger!

We replaced with something less sexy but it works better and costs way less.

Was he cryptomining or something?

Few years back I had a setup like that joined to a big IRC network to run some services (parsing 10s of thousands of chat lines a second for malware monitoring reasons) and it cost far less a month than that to run - and that had some pretty serious utilisation to the point I got a stark lesson in the difference between consumer and enterprise hardware in real utilisation - nearly had a fire from a PSU failure and separately several HDDs not standing up to the sustained utilisation due to re-purposing consumer grade bits I had lying about.