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Data Storage Hardware Hacking Hardware

Homebuilt 19" Mini-ITX Server Rack 180

Posted by timothy from the mother-of-invention dept.
TykSak writes "I started to build this rack with Mini-ITX boards almost 3 years ago and today it holds four 3U servers with a total of 28 harddrives. I made this site to describe the process of the build."
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Homebuilt 19" Mini-ITX Server Rack More

Homebuilt 19" Mini-ITX Server Rack

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  • Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by kaosrain ( 543532 ) <root@kaosr a i n .com> on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:12AM (#13051318) Homepage
    TOTAL SPACE:
    4643Gb > 4.53 Tera bytes (28 Harddrives)
    • 4.53Tb. Thats a lotta pr0n. (hell what else is it gonna be filled with?)

    • Re:Summary (Score:5, Informative)

      by stephenpeters ( 576955 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @04:33AM (#13051547) Homepage

      This is going to interesting for him if he needs to fsck a large filesystem. His hardware specification couples large disk sizes with insufficient memory for fsck to load a large number of ext2/3 inodes during a pass. I hope he has the sense (if using ext2/3 at all) to split his disks into smaller partitions.

      With the current availability of large IDE,firewire and USB disks more and more people will hit resource limits during fsck processes. People using inexpensive systems such as the ones in TFA are unlikley to have the resources to back up tera byte size disks.

      Steve

      • Combine that with the fact that it looks like there are two drives per IDE controller and you have one mess of a file server. Lose one controller, lose two disks. NOT a good idea.
      • For a system like this, I'd use a parallel filesystem. If on a budget, I'd go with GFS [redhat.com].

      • Re:Summary (Score:2, Funny)

        by AVryhof ( 142320 )
        This is going to interesting for him if he needs to fsck a large filesystem


        YEAH! FSCK THE SYSTEM!

      • Re:Summary (Score:2, Informative)

        by antsquish ( 320643 )
        Given that it seems to be running Windows on all bar the router system, I'd imagine that fsck is a non-issue.

  • Cool, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drivinghighway61 ( 812488 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:12AM (#13051320) Homepage
    This is pretty useless. The mini-itx chipsets aren't really appropriate for server usage, especially considering the weak VIA processors and the high prices for the boards. I'd much rather just set up a couple of AMD boxes for the price.

    • Re:Cool, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 )
      That depends on what load you want to put on the server.
      I have been looking around for info to build such a thing. I'd like to have 1TB of raid-protected storage for a digital video recorder. Performance is not an issue, but I would like it to be quiet, lowpower, and not too big.

      I have not yet decided between building a standalone "server" or just adding a lot of disks to my existing Linux box.
      • I have been looking around for info to build such a thing. I'd like to have 1TB of raid-protected storage for a digital video recorder. Performance is not an issue, but I would like it to be quiet, lowpower, and not too bi

        Perhaps this [sun.com] is what you are looking for ?
        • No, I am looking for a lowcost NAS box that uses 250 or 300 GB IDE disks in a small enclosure.
          The Buffalo unit is close to what I want.

          Video recording (at current resolution) requires about 500-600 kbyte/s and very few file opens, so no impressive performance is needed.

      • Re:Cool, but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by karstux ( 681641 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @05:15AM (#13051639) Homepage
        How about this box [buffalo-technology.com]? 1.2 TB (with RAID 5) in a neat little package. Since it's an embedded system, it should be ok in the noise/power usage department.

        Unfortunately, I don't own one, so I don't know know if there are any "showstoppers"...

        • Re:Cool, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by StressedEd ( 308123 )
          We have been looking at this for the purpose of acting as a backup server (disk space is running short). Came across a review [tomsnetworking.com] which under due consideration I think rules it out. The application we have is for a set of redundent backup servers serving NFS backups. Since this doesn't support NFS out of the box it pretty much rules it out straight away. The lack of hot swap is also a no-no. In my opinion RAID is not much use unless you can couple that with a redundent disk which can be swapped in automati
          • I have been considering some form of distrubuted storage cluster. In other words an array of machines which presents a single logical drive with redundency on a machine basis. Do people here have any experience with this (GFS et al.)? Care to comment?

            I am actually working on something similar.

            The Roll Your Own SAN HOWTO:

            On the back end, we will have "disk nodes". These are 1U or 2U machines holding either 1.2 or 2.8TB of usable storage (4 or 8 400GB SATA drives in a RAID5, 1.6 or 3.2TB raw). They wi

        • Yes, I found that one already during my search...
          It is ok for 1TB but I continued looking further as it is quite expensive at this size.
          (5 or 8 smaller disks are more attractive)

    • Re:Cool, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spagetti_code ( 773137 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:19AM (#13051341)
      Perhaps - depends on the application.

      If its IO bound, these may function just fine. Given they run cool (low cooling requirements), quiet and with low power usage, they may provide a good mips-per-operating-$$. They are not that cheap on a $/mips from a capex point of view though.
      • Given they run cool

        I once told a mate that the VIA processor on my Mini-ITX board was good because it ran cool. He wanted to know where he could download it...

      • Re:Cool, but... (Score:3, Informative)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 )
        If its IO bound, these may function just fine.

        One of the servers I manage is a "backup" server that incrementally backs up numerous other hosts using software I wrote (in part) Backup Buddy [effortlessis.com].

        Basically, it's an old AMD K6-2 450 (yes, it's so ancient it's even AT instead of ATX) with a few PCI IDE controller cards and a crapload of IDE HDDs. CPU performance is irrelevant - it's all I/O bound, rsync over SSH.

        It does the job wonderfully, and has for a long time. I have many months worth of backups of all imp
        • Nice. I have a pretty similar setup at home, although I use dirvish and not backup buddy. An old Ppro-200 with a couple of extra disks.

          But IIRC it is somewhat cpu limited, or at least the load on the ppro box is pretty high when it is backuping, rsync and ssh use a lot of cpu.

          All in all, I'm very happy with it. Beats tapes and cd/dvd-r:s and it's cheap since you can get old comps really cheaply.
        • that looks kind of neat. How is the web interface coming along?
      • Er.. you get the point wrong.
        The very fact that they are IO bound makes the via stuff a problem. (think of pci implementations, ect. HDs have 40-50MByte STR, but you need bandwith for the LAN, too. Add to this a typical 60-70MByte/s pci implementation of a VIA chipset (thats for desktop ones, those mini-things could be worse) you couldnt handle one modern HD via Gbit ethernet with one of those boards...
        • This guy seems to be running his server in his bedroom at home, probably over a DSL line. The bottleneck is the DSL line, and the server is plenty fast IMO to keep up with that.
      • The via mini-itx platform is great in small spaces where you want little noise, and when the available power is limited. You can run multiple mini-itx setups with one cheap ups, and you can run it on portable solar panels and in cars.

        Whether it is cheap from a capex point of view depends on the situation: there are valid applications for it in small inner city offices, in cars, and in the third world.
        • It's funny that you mention that they run well in cars, because I was just perusing MP3car.com [mp3car.com] before I hopped over to /. to start my morning off proper.

          I just bought a new car, and had been seriously looking into building a box to house in my car (just imagine the drive to work with a pr0n slideshow rolling). By the looks of things, they primarily deal in the VIA Epia boards over there...hrm *ponders*

    • Re:Cool, but... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Orochi ( 798777 )
      I can see the VIA cpu's being practical in a firewall/VPN node within that rack due to their hardware accelerated encryption engine, as shown in http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/padlock/hardw are.jsp [via.com.tw] but Pentium M based mini-itx boxes would be a much wiser, albeit pricier choice, performance wise.

    • Re:Cool, but... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This 19" server is aimed at penetrating the porn market.
    • At my house, I have a small box as a household/internet server. I am using the mini-itx/via. In addition, it has a gig. ram, and 4 hard disks (a 40G for the system/swap, and 3 samsungs 160G for data). This set-up is located in a very small networking closet, with minimal ventalation. The system is quiet, and produces just a little heat. Had this been an AMD, there would be a lot of heat and a lot of power consumption.

    • Re:Cool, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ryan Amos ( 16972 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @05:19AM (#13051651)
      They're fine, even ideal for home server usage. If you don't need the CPU power anyway (and honestly an athlon XP 2000+ is way overkill for most home servers) the power savings are nice. A file server doesn't need more than a crappy CPU and some good SCSI/SATA cards. This is especially true because the server will likely be on 24/7.
    • Not only that, considering the time and effort he put into this, it probably cost more than buying appropriate hardware. If you are going to custom build then it should be for performance reasons. A 600 buck 1u server won't have a powerful cpu but heck, at 600 bucks you can have two for the price of one home built (if you factor in labour and parts)

      I would love to have rack machines at home for the geek factor but then again, my dsl line is not sufficient for proper hosting, it is cheaper the way I have it

    • Wrong, wrong (Score:2, Informative)

      by hedgehog2097 ( 688249 ) *
      I disagree. There are umptimillion inexpensive Mini-ITX boards out there running servers, large and small. You don't need a lot of CPU to chug bits over a network.

      Mini-ITX [mini-itx.com] boards drive the Internet Archive, for instance:

      http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/22/ 0418253&tid=198&tid=126&tid=137&tid=106 [slashdot.org]

    • A file server's processor only needs to be fast enough. Anything faster will have almost zero effect on performance.
    • Weak? Remember a few years back when 486s, the "new" pentiums, and pentium pro chips were fine for servers?
    • The VIA Eden / C3 processor was added to gcc in ver 3.3 onwards

      http://www.courville.org/phpwiki/Gcc [courville.org]

      I've had MIssing Opcode panics from GENERIC kernels on OpenBSD, FreeBSD and plan9

    • The mini-itx chipsets aren't really appropriate for server usage, especially considering the weak VIA processors and the high prices for the boards.

      More importantly, the motherboards will have bugger all bus bandwidth (a single 32/33 PCI bus). Performance (particularly things like RAID [re]builds) will suck. That's assuming the awful VIA chipset can even handle so much bus traffic without tanking.

      Of course, since he's built the things with both master and slave drives on each IDE channel, performance i

  • Slashdotted (Score:3, Funny)

    by Omicron32 ( 646469 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:19AM (#13051340)
    4 comments and already crawling. Guess we've melted a few of those hard drives then.
    • and annoyingly it looks like mirrordot didn't pick up anything besides the first page. Anyone have a link?
    • I particularly like how the site has a counter... I refreshed the page because I thought it hadn't loaded properly and noticed the counter had already jumped some 600 hits.
    • Last time I stacked harddrives *almost* that tight they started to act wierd after a few weeks. After one drive failed I checked the diagnostics and it reported something like 60 degress centigrade from the discs in the middle of the stack. This looks like an even worse solution.
      • He's got some space beween the drives, and (on the file server anyway) a pretty big fan aimed right at them, using one fan to cool 4 drives. Doesn't look too bad to me.
    • He did a great job on the case, but that poor website is gonna be in a world of hurt in a few hours.

  • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jeet81 ( 613099 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:23AM (#13051357)
    Wow that's soo cool having a server farm right beside where I sit. :)
  • One after the other, we see people stuff a bunch of hard drives in a box, and end up with X Terrabytes of storage space. Impressive, no more than the individual drives manufactured that allow someone to shove a bunch in a box and multiply X Gigs to get X Terras.
  • .. I guess we melted the Mini ITX boards he was hosting this on!

    Seriously, why does crap like this always get modded funny? I guess I must be new here.
  • Is it just me or is that thing over twice the volume it really needs to be?

    Still looks quite nice though.

  • This sweet and economical rack was built in september of 2003. The project's worklog shows that the only changes have been swapping hard drives since then. It looks like a great file/web server. It's just not that topical. I'm waiting for a water-cooled Beowulf cluster...now that would be something.
    • and really is more expensive than it needed to be. a real rack is dirt cheap. I purchased my 4 foot rack with wood sides for less than $35.00. and bought aluminum 19" rack cases that handle 12 drives each for less than $55.00 each with power supplies.

      It's neat that he did everything himself, but I'd rather do it 10 times faster for 1/2 the price by buying all the parts.

      and for home, a single powerful server in a wall mount case makes more sense. At least that is what I sell on the side to the Home autom

  • Pretty, but... why? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joel Rowbottom ( 89350 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:38AM (#13051406) Homepage
    Is it 1997 again already? I mean, *why*?

    It's nice building stuff on your own but this sort of hardware doesn't cut it when you're talking about servers, and I suspect with all the manpower the cost-per-server is actually *more* than if you'd bought it in its entirety.

    Places like Sight Systems [sightsystems.co.uk] will quite happily spray-paint a case for you or even etch a logo into it, and the 2U cases they do will happily house reasonably cheap P4 boards (they even do fans for them).

    Plus, 4U cases which take standard ATX PSUs are now less than £100 in the UK (you get to do the math if you don't live in the UK). Quite why "bloke makes a rackmount server using rackmount bits" makes Slashdot I don't know.

    Oh well. Maybe I'm just getting old.

    • Re:Pretty, but... why? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe because you can only think in terms of how inexpensively you would do any particular task.

      The main reasons people use Via Mini-ITX is,
      * very small form factor
      * very low power consumption
      * whisper quiet

      These factors combined with the fact that many servers these days are not high traffic, makes this approach quite attractive.

      Remember alot of the work in these areas is by teenagers with computers in their bedrooms - hence the modding of systems, far beyond 'spray painting'.
    • You know, when I think "rackmount Mini-ITX", I think something like this [logicsupply.com].
  • A little foreword

    I think the idea of having a 19" rack at home is every techs dream. This was also the case when I wanted to decomission my power hungry and space consuming server PCs and replace them with a 19" rack, but it seems that when ever the frase "19 inch" is added to any PC part the price skyrockets.

    That was the end of my dream until a friend told me he was going to build a new 19" rack for his music equipment as his old rack was getting to small. So we looked into it and discovered it used the

  • Coral Cache (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As everyone is melting the servers..

    http://rack.modzone.dk.nyud.net:8090/ [nyud.net]

  • But what did it cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by matthew.thompson ( 44814 ) <{ku.oc.ytilautca} {ta} {ttam}> on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @03:58AM (#13051466) Journal
    Seriously if this was - Man makes own Blade server using Mini-ITX motherboards that would be damn impressive.

    Imagine having a home cluster in a really small space with hot-pluggable units.

    But this is just Man makes 4 PCs and puts hard drives in them - and spends more than if he'd bought the units anyway.
    • But this is just Man makes 4 PCs and puts hard drives in them

      And if this builder had made an space orbiter you would just ask the question whats so hard about taking a VW Beetle and put a rocket enginge on it.

      Clue, he did a fair bit more than what you summarized.
  • I wouldn't want to be within 100 yards of this vacuum cleaner.
    • I wouldn't want to be within 100 yards of this vacuum cleaner.

      The mini-itx setups probably use so little power that they can do without cooling altogether, even on the power supplies.

      I don't think there is a more silent way of mounting the 28 hard disks, but the hard disks consume much more power than the computers. Cutting down on the number of hard disks is a better idea.

  • He made a rack..... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Meest ( 714734 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @04:02AM (#13051481)
    Why is this something to post about... measureing 19" is not that hard.... Hell i do it on a daily basis as i work in Pro audio/lighting.

    What would have been simpler to me is to just by a Mid-atlantic rack, get the shelving unit (U1 or U3).

    Find a computer case thats 19" tall. Throw it on its side. screw it to the shelf and then mount it in the case.

    Also could have gotten some 19" blanks and lined the back with fans/outtakes, put an AC Plug on there. along with RJ45 jack that goes to the switch. so it looks cleaner with less wires hanging out.

    http://www.rit.edu/~ajw8557/computer/rack/index.ht ml [rit.edu]

    I think these guys did a much cooler job making one that this dude.... at least they did it with an old fridge!
    • Its even worse than that. He couldn't install handles because he didn't have access to a 'milling machine'.

      A milling machine? How the hell can you claim to be a hacker if you can't do anything without fairly expensive machine shop tools? Why didn't he just send an order out to eMachines if he was that limited?

      Did he not have access to a router? A decent one will only cost $30. Cheaper if you wait for Harbor Freight to put them on sale. A few scrap 2x4 blocks as guides and he would have a perfect rec
    • its pictures like that of a dude in a skirt that makes me afraid to admit i go to that school...
    • Holy shit.. that dude in the skirt just looks retarded. Seriously.. what's with this guy's fashion sense? He must be a Slashdotter. Perhaps he's even reading this post..

  • Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)

    by po8 ( 187055 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @04:06AM (#13051491)
    Nice rack!

    Thanks, I'll be here all week...

  • Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by ZorbaTHut ( 126196 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @04:18AM (#13051517) Homepage
    "I think the idea of having a 19" rack at home is every techs dream."

    Know what I mean, know what I mean? Say no more! Wink wink, nudge nudge.

    Is she a . . . goer?
  • He lists his e-mail as 19inch@gamil.com - I would have thought that the pr0n guys would have been using that already?
  • Insert obligatory link to thread on grammar and spelling [slashdot.org].

    </snarky>


  • My question is what is he serving with that much storage space? After reading TFA, I didn't what he is using his servers for.

    I bet one thing, his prOn selection on the fileserver is TOP NOTCH!

  • the "U" in 1U (Score:5, Funny)

    by sl4shd0rk ( 755837 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @05:13AM (#13051637)
    "A little info! A "U" is the measured height of a server case 1U is 44.45mm (1.75inches) 19 inches is 482,6mm"

    Actually, the historical roots of the U are traced back to Bonnie Scotland. The U was the designation of how many sheep could be stuffed [homestead.com] into the small slot of a server rack. The server rack would then be set afire as the rack doubled as a barbecue on the weekends. (This is where Al Gore studied the creation of the internet incidentally) The phrase "rack of ribs" was also coined in Bonnie Scotland during the infamous "Troy McLure Cuefest of '79" (1879) during a rendition of "Laddie, fetch me ha'notharack o them ribs" performed by, who else, The Scotsmen.
  • Happy Hacking keyboard! I saw that and I was impressed, but then again I'm running a 900Mhz Duron, Yeah baby!!!
  • Via mobos only have 2 ide chains = 4 drives max. And one PCI slot (although you *can* run two cards on it). How does he get 8 drives onto some of these things?
  • Jesus christ. 4.53 terabytes and 500 watts power draw. What one person could possibly use that much space as of today? And I wonder how much his electric bill is ... doubtless at least $300/month

  • After working on this project on and off for over 2 years I'm quite happy and that I finally finished it

    Especially since - in those two years - the cost of rack systems has fallen into your price range.

    :)
  • Because that sure is a nice rack !

  • Priceless (Score:2, Funny)

    by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )
    19" rack for servers - $3000.
    1 U server - $1500 (nicely equiped).
    1 Disk drive (of many) for 4 terrabyte server - $200.
    Weeks to load with content - 5.
    Look at admin's face when a new 4 TB software raid fails - Priceless.
  • Those hard drives look like they could fry at any moment. He has them in tight stacks of 4.

  • $69 (Score:3, Informative)

    by dickens ( 31040 ) on Wednesday July 13, 2005 @10:54AM (#13054105) Homepage
    Just had to do some googling after I read this. I was amazed to find that one can get a rack mount cases from $69. See here [rackmountmaster.com].
  • He's got 5 mobos, 28 hdds and something like the equivalent of about 3633GHz of processing power. (yeah I know you can't just add them like that, especially when youve got 4 copies of windoze sucking the life out of your CPU, but still...)

    All that for the power usage of a typical gaming system. 500W when all active, 235 with HDD spindown.

    I run a via system for my PVR - loaded up its 72W at startup, and stabilizes to 30-40W when running. Equivalent to a dim bulb - very nice.

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