home rack rebuild plan

May 30, 2021

what’s the problem? #

My virtualization lab, networking gear, NAS and AV backbone is an absolute mess. The current 12u server rack is full, the 6u network rack has stuff sitting not just in it but on top of it, and it’s all a real mess down there. Lots of wasted space, awkward network and power runs, and poor use of the large mesh storage shelves in that area. I’d like to store other stuff in that space, and sitting the 6u rack unit on top of wire mesh shelves with printer/AV equipment underneath just doesn’t work.

The space is an unfinished portion of the basement that used to house our washer and dryer. Since we moved them up into the second floor laundry closet earlier this year, I’ve got a bunch of extra floor space to properly rearrange the equipment. That area is a great storage spot, with easy outdoor access, so maximizing shelf space is a priority. Getting all equipment into a rack or onto a permanent shelf, and keeping the shelves as accessible as possible are my two guiding principles.

You can see in the original floorplan drawing how awkward the layout is.

failed solutions #

42u or bust #

My first thought was to collapse it all down into one large rack. A 42u rack would fit everything that I have, with room to grow. This has some great benefits around easier power and network runs (running within a single rack is way easier than cleanly running outside).

Unfortunately, a 42u rack needs 78" (well, more precisely it needs 72.1875" plus whatever is required for the rack’s structure) of vertical clearance. From poured slab to first floor joist, I’ve got 79", but plumbing runs more than an inch below anywhere that I’d like to actually stick this rack. I could stick a 42u rack in another portion of the basement, but that would be less than ideal (suddenly, I’m solving the sliding tile puzzle of emptying another portion out before I can even start. No way). So we’ll have to go shorter.

square pegs in round holes #

Not all of the equipment that I have is really rack mountable. The printer and PS5 are really not workable in a rack mount; the printer would take up way too much space, and need a pull out shelf to be useful. The PS5 just doesn’t fit right in a rack (or anywhere, really). The Xbox One X could rack mount pretty cleanly in a 2u shelf, but since I need to keep a separate AV shelf anyway, let’s keep the PS5 and Xbox One X together, alongside the printer. I’ll lose one shelf on my mesh shelves, but such is life. The wire shelf unit can stay where it is, and dedicate one shelf to printer + consoles. A single Ubiquiti switch lite 16 PoE will deal with networking, and I’ll run two HDMI 2.0 cables along the ceiling to the HDMI matrix.

have less computer stuff #

No.

solution #

Add a 25u rack, positioned immediately to the left when walking into the raised basement area. Put the 12u rack, currently floating in front of three shelving units and blocking access, to the right of the 25u rack. The 8 shelf metal wire shelving unit currently on the opposite side of the basement can go against the wall next to the outside door. The two existing metal shelves can stay in place, and the white cube units can also stay where they are for now. All will be accessible again once the rack units are out of the way.

So the new floor plan will be something like:

what’s in the rack? #

Both of these racks have variable depth, which is useful if I ever want to lose my mind and mount units to the front and back. I’ll plan to set them to their shallowest setting, since all of my equipment fits in that. They’re both open topped, but once they’re in place I’ll likely cut down some plywood to make the tops work surfaces.

r1 - 25u rack #

r1 is a StarTech 25U Open Frame Server Rack

Drawn out, it should look like:

And in table form with links:

r2 - 12u rack #

r2 is a StarTech 12U Open Frame Server Rack.

A quick sketch of the unit once filled:

And in table form with links:

pdu mapping #

I don’t have rack mountable UPS’s yet, which is a bit of a bummer. The tower models that I’ve got will have to do; upstream of e1+e2 will be one Cyberpower tower UPS, and upstream of e3 will be the second.

e1 - PDU at r1.25 #

e1 has 8 rear facing plugs.

e2 - PDU at r1.14 #

e2 has only 6 rear facing plugs. I have this PDU already, and the 6 externally facing plugs might be useful for one off/quick plugins.

e3 - PDU at r2.12 #

e3 is identical to e2, and again benefits from me already owning it.

patch panel mapping #

I really like these keystone patch panels. I made the mistake of punching down the patch panel in my current 6u network rack; it was a tremendous waste of time, and the second I wanted to change something I regretted the configuration. Cat6 keystones are definitely the way to go.

p1 - patch panel at r1.22 #

p2 - patch panel at r1.20 #

p3 - patch panel at r2.11 #

switch mapping #

Three primary switches in this rack. us-8-150w deals with all things PoE. usw-pro-24 acts as the primary 1gig switch, and us-16-xg sits in as the core 10gig switch.

us-8-150w #

usw-pro-24 #

us-16-xg #

hdmi matrix mapping #

I love this lunatic device. Being able to reprogram display flows is so much fun, and the flexibility to easily share any device remotely with folks via the matrix/Atem Mini Extreme combo is down right magical.

Input mapping is mostly reliant on out of rack cables. The Apple TV and Proxmox01 (windows 10 gaming VM with passthrough GPU) inputs are both in rack, and the consoles will both need slightly longer cables since the matrix is moving off of the shelf that they currently live in. The rest is in my big desk HDMI bundle, coming in through the ceiling.

Output mapping is entirely out of rack at the moment. I’ll move my HDMI bundle over pretty much unchanged.

Loopout HDMI port mapping:

Courtesy of the analog audio outputs, I can get audio flows into the Behringer and onto the Dante network. This lets me reprogam audio even more dynamically than video, sending buses anywhere I need along the Dante network. So here we’ll have two 3.5mm to dual 1/4 inch cables running down from the matrix into the X32 rack.

Analog audio output mapping from the matrix:

what’s next? #

I think that’s the plan. It doesn’t rely on me adding a whole bunch of new equipment (the only new stuff is the 25u rack, one more patch panel and a third PDU), and it should have some space for me to rearrange things and expand (the drawers can come out in the future, the fractal design case can be collapsed down into 2u)

If I’ve totally whiffed on something, let me know! If all goes well, I should be able to make the switch next weekend. I’ll document the process, and hopefully when next I write, it will be with a newly reorganized home rack!