Rack
Rack
Image by splorp
I’ve had a few people ask what my basement server rack looks like. Since I’m about to reconfigure the rack, I thought that this would be a good time to document a bit of the “before” and “after”. This is obviously the “before”.
The reconfiguration will include replacing a cranky, ten year old Tripp Lite SmartPro 700RM UPS (the grey device at the very bottom of the rack) with a pair of brand new, slim line APC Smart-UPS 750VA units. I also need to find room to stuff a second Power Macintosh G4 and an Xserve in there somewhere.
Much to my chagrin (and silly pleasure) this photo has been featured on several geektastic sites over the past week or so, including:
Thanks for the linkage, folks.
no Newton server?
The Newton is on my desk upstairs … although I have tinkered with the idea of building a rack mount for it.
Heh heh, at first I thought that the four LaCie d2 Quadra hard drives were two Xserve, one on top of the other!
As crazy as it may sound, I find this photo very intimate: lots of things with their own history, a peek in the tinkerer’s grotto, etc. You would get along very well with my dad.
Cheers,
Rick
I’m glad you find this image “intimate” … my wife thinks this area of the basement is nothing but cacophonous and irritating. Can’t say as I blame her … it is rater “busy”. Now, off to add a few more notes …
Very similar to my dad’s garage. And of course my mum is past complaining — by now she just stays away from it. It has become ‘no-wife territory’ as she says.
it wouldn’t be so bad if this scene wasn’t six feet from the laundry area.
You’re such a nerd. And of course I mean that in the best way possible buddy
Glad your mug is still in one piece too!
a pdp-8 going to the grave brings a tear to my eye.
Very impressive.
My 18U server rack housing PowerMac G4s and Xserves lived in our living room for the first six years of my girlfriend’s and my relationship… you think your wife thinks it’s, "cacophonous and irritating!" Fortunately I downsized to an 8U desk rack a couple years ago, but somehow three PowerMacs (er… a Power Macintosh and two PowerMacs) have since worked their way into duty.
It’s times like these I wish we could view notes in larger image sizes.
@scottboms Feeling the love. And I have to take care of that mug … it’s a rarity. That’s why it’s not upstairs with the day to day dishes.
@newjerseydan The PDP didn’t work when I bought it from Husky Oil back in the early 80s. I’m pretty sure it had been decommissioned and was being used for spare parts. There was only one core memory card left, although the backplane and the Decpack hard drive unit were both in top notch shape. All of the PDP parts that came out of this rack are still in my collection … I just put the rack to good use.
@morgant I’m just thinking about how many more G4s I could fit in there if I finally retired the beige beasties.
@jish I agree. Short of opening two windows, it’s definitely a pain.
@splorp With PowerMac G4s in G•Racks (6U each) you could replace those two beige with only two acrylic. Xserves on the other hand… or Mac minis (the direction I’m going)!
I, too, thought those were XServes!
Nice!
@morgant What I’m planning on doing is replacing the 9600 with an Xserve, so I can continue to host multiple domains under Apache. I’d kind of like to keep the 8500 up and running with MacHTTP, as it also runs QuickDNS hosting 60 or so primary and secondary domains. I’m not looking forward to migrating DNS over to BIND or anything else for that matter. My old workstation, an accelerated G4 like the one shown above, will eventually run headless in this rack as my OS X Tiger / OS 9 test box.
@schoschie Very similar looking, aren’t they?
@ohai It needs tidying, but it’s functional.
Nice!
The Russian safety sign says
NO garbage overboard!!
Wow. I ran a lot of servers like this back in the last century. Talk about security through obscurity!
@foxtrotru Thank you for confirming what I thought the sign said. Unfortunately, both my brother in law and me have very few Russian transliteration skills.
@vonguard Exactly. No firewall. No virus protection. No worries.
"Accessory input"?!?!
IDEAL!
“Auxiliary” input, actually. But, yes.
/me wrings fingers together furiously with evil laugh
I just wish I’d have it finished for you by SXSW … I’d smuggle it down in my baggage … with a nice bottle of something smooth.
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called What’s on your shelves?, and we’d love to have this added to the group!
Thanks for the invitation. However, I don’t think my image quite fits in with the rest of the group’s content very well.
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Robots, Automatons, Mainframes and the Silicon Revolution, and we’d love to have this added to the group!
Added.