Cheap Rack-Mounts

The Cheap Rack Project

Friend Dave Cole needed a place to park his servers while he was moving: my spouse thought there were too many computers in the house. I needed a plan to house a bunch of gear - 6 cpus and attendant stuff- in the garage.

Racks like ISPs use are real expensive...

Slashdot had a feature recently about cheap racks. A couple of people mentioned using heavy-duty shelf brackets and shelves available from hardware and home supply stores.

Step 1 was to mount the tracks, which cost about $10 apiece to the studs. The literature with the racks said a unit - which I take to mean a pair of rails - will hold 800 lbs. I figured 6 CPUs and a small monitor would come in around 200 lbs.

Next, shelves (made from an old cabinet) were bolted to brackets which fit in the tracks. The shelves are 16 inches deep, 34 inches wide.

The first of Dave's CPUs arrives: a PowerMacintosh 8100. An inexpensive wire mesh shelf - which locks in place into specially-notched brackets - holds a small monitor, the KVM switch and a hub. The blue CAT 5 cable comes from a DSL modem/router.

Power strip/surge protector mounts on the stud and the studs make room for wires behind the shelves.

Steel Kensington cables add a little more physical security (though the real security is the age of the computers!).

The red bins are storage boxes that came from the same Home Depot as the shelves. They hold the usual garage junk...

Halfway there: 3 CPUs installed running off a small 10 Base-T hub. All 3 of these machines are older Macs - 2 running Mac OS, home to Dave's newspaper systems news and analysis business - colegroup.com - and the third runs Yellow Dog Linux, providing AppleShare and DNS services for gulker.com.

Dave manages the Mac servers using Timbuktu, the Mac equivalent of PC anywhere. I manage the Linux box via Telnet.

Next up: 3 more CPUs....

More CPUs, another wire shelf (cut to fit with a hack saw), a PC running Linux and a Mac IIci that we'll try to get running under a UNIX-like operating system of some sort.

If we get really ambitious, a couple of old 6100s will join the rack. Not bad for about $50...

Back to www.gulker.com

The Cheap Rack Project Friend Dave Cole needed a place to park his servers while he was moving: my spouse thought there were too many computers in the house. I needed a plan to house a bunch of gear - 6 cpus and attendant stuff- in the garage. Racks like ISPs use are real expensive... Slashdot had a feature recently about cheap racks. A couple of people mentioned using heavy-duty shelf brackets and shelves available from hardware and home supply stores. Step 1 was to mount the tracks, which cost about $10 apiece to the studs. The literature with the racks said a unit - which I take to mean a pair of rails - will hold 800 lbs. I figured 6 CPUs and a small monitor would come in around 200 lbs. Next, shelves (made from an old cabinet) were bolted to brackets which fit in the tracks. The shelves are 16 inches deep, 34 inches wide.
	The first of Dave's CPUs arrives: a PowerMacintosh 8100. An inexpensive wire mesh shelf - which locks in place into specially-notched brackets - holds a small monitor, the KVM switch and a hub. The blue CAT 5 cable comes from a DSL modem/router. Power strip/surge protector mounts on the stud and the studs make room for wires behind the shelves. Steel Kensington cables add a little more physical security (though the real security is the age of the computers!). The red bins are storage boxes that came from the same Home Depot as the shelves. They hold the usual garage junk...
Halfway there: 3 CPUs installed running off a small 10 Base-T hub. All 3 of these machines are older Macs - 2 running Mac OS, home to Dave's newspaper systems news and analysis business - colegroup.com - and the third runs Yellow Dog Linux, providing AppleShare and DNS services for gulker.com. Dave manages the Mac servers using Timbuktu, the Mac equivalent of PC anywhere. I manage the Linux box via Telnet. Next up: 3 more CPUs....
	More CPUs, another wire shelf (cut to fit with a hack saw), a PC running Linux and a Mac IIci that we'll try to get running under a UNIX-like operating system of some sort. If we get really ambitious, a couple of old 6100s will join the rack. Not bad for about $50...