 When it was but a closet |
 The Initial Setup |
 And Finally… |
Shortly after moving in to my house, I opted to use a room for my Geekery (formerly known as “Nerdery”).. I dedicated circuit for power installed to make this closet remotely suitable to set up my hacky server “rack” (AKA Ikea Shelf) in.
Update (Apr 26)
This hack has been posted on Hackaday, Howtogeek and geeknmod (I suppose some others too). Coolness.
Snap
After several months I couldn’t stand the sub-organization of it all. I wanted to be able to close the closet door (which had cables coming out of it) and I felt I needed some substantial air-flow through the space. Thus the “Datacentre Project” was born.
n-birds
Like any good geek, I opted to also use the project to explore some other things. You know, n-birds with 1 stone. So by incarnating the Datacentre, I indirectly explored Google Sites, Picasa and Elementary Woodworking.
Time
It took me of the order of about 40 hours to complete the whole thing from start to finish. Much time was spent planning, measuring and driving back to the hardware store for some small thing(s) I needed more of.
Journal
As I said, I used the project to also explore Google Sites. Thus, I made a kind of journal with detailed notes & photos here.
On the Layout
The layout I ultimately built out was done so to enable me ideally easy access to the innards of all machines in the space. I can (tightly) negotiate my body between the machines and switch things up without having to move anything (that’s epic). I have a pair of cables I can attach to any of the machines (poor-man’s KVM) so I can get at their consoles if I’m having remote problems. I’m considering making a narrow set of drawers that can be rolled in and out of the center cavity. I’d put cables and things in those. The only other thing the space could probably use, is more cowbell!
Looking Back
In hind sight the whole project took me far longer than I expected. Like in many other areas so much time went to in planning (which ended up being a highly iterative process as I’d think of new things as I’d be about to implement a previous idea). I must add, I don’t really like the LEDs, except they ended up being functional. Ideally they’d be white or a whitish-yellow. But that wasn’t an option.