Server in a wall mounted cabinet?

champ222

champ222

champ222

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Hi all

in a large walk in cupboard in our office, we have a fairly typical (i'm assuming) wall mount rack cabinet where the phone stuff lives and the patch panels etc.

we need a small server for backups and stuff, and they make short 3U pc cases that will fit (a 400mm deep case will fit fine).

Its going to have a mATX board, ATX PSU and a couple of drives in.

I dont see heat being an issue, i assume there is no reason i shouldnt put it there?

Thanks
 
Is there any ventilation at all to this cupboard? If there isn't then I imagine it will eventually reach quite a high temperature, depending on size, building materials and whether part of it is an external wall. Have you got any spare PCs you could use to test out the use case before splashing out on specific hardware?
 
Assuming it does not get too hot in there, one server on modest hardware (dumping ~50W of power?) shouldn't make too much difference. I'd say keep an eye on it for a while, especially as summer approaches. Looking further down the line, will there be more of a requirement in the future? Do you have any infrastructure there already? Might be worth making the investment now to aircon the cupboard now rather than in July when everything crashes
 
As above - The locations chosen for Comms cabinets are generally not suitable for servers, as even a single server can generate a reasonable amount of heat in a confined space.

At the very least you ideally want a vent Louvre on the door, and ideally a small extractor fan to create some airflow through the room.


Depending on what the use case is, would a NAS be sufficient - something like a Synology or QNAP can perform basic server duties and wouldn't create as much heat.
 
no, but its a pretty big cupboard.

I plan on using some old pc hardware (pentium from the Core2Duo days i think) with a gigabyte G31M es2l mobo, as i have a windows 10 license for it. drive for storage, and drive for OS.

so we only need the Case, drives and PSU
 
to be honest, we can put the server anywhere, its just convenient to have it in the cupboard. maybe that would be best...
 
i like the idea of being able to pull the HDD for access in a windows PC if the hardware fails. can you do that with a QNAP or similar? or is it a different file system to NTFS?
 
Make sure there's a decent airflow. The closet door should have vents top and bottom, and make sure there's a good airflow around the server.
 
Quartz said:
Think about what happens if the server hardware fails. Will you have another PC available? Will you have another QNAP available?
Click to expand...

I'd argue that it'd be easier to replace a failed Qnap than a Windows PC and more likely to work first time. More importantly, they are designed for this sort of use. You can run backups of the Qnap to a large USB 3 external or two too, for off site backup.
 
With modern versions of Windows client and server, you can generally just bung the HDD into a new box and it will work. You may need to supply drivers on a USB stick. But with a QNAP box, will you not need another QNAP box to hand?
 
i was thinking of running the OS on a separate drive to the data, so if the PC fails, i can access the data by plugging it into any other pc (then that PC can take on that job temporarily), or use the backup drive or whatever, then fix/replace the PC, re-install windows, pop drive in and its done. seems easier to me, than faffing about with a NAS manufacturer using a file system thats unique to them, which is now different from last years version, and.... (ive made some sweeping statements here i know lol)
 
Quartz said:
But with a QNAP box, will you not need another QNAP box to hand?
Click to expand...

champ222 said:
seems easier to me, than faffing about with a NAS manufacturer using a file system thats unique to them, which is now different from last years version, and.... (ive made some sweeping statements here i know lol)
Click to expand...

Whilst it's certainly not as easy as pulling a single drive and just plugging it in to another windows PC, even if the hardware completely fails (and you don't want to purchase another NAS) as far as I know both Synology and QNAP use standard Linux formats for both their filesystem (e.g. EXT4), and their RAID implementations are based on the underlying Linux implementations.
 
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