I am a little bit of a tech-freak, and as I also work in IT, I have become accustomed to using rack cabinets for containing all the techy equipment I’ve got to run in the house. It is practical and keeps everything quite tidy.
After acquiring a few pieces of what I needed, I had to make an actual rack to house the equipment.
This is what I did:
I started with planning what I wanted to place in the rack and how many U’s each piece would occupy. I ended up at 15U, which should be enough. The rack rails I ordered from eBay/proaudiostashgb who could supply any size needed.
Blatantly copying a design I found on the internet, I started out with some 2x4s and this was the start.
When screwing it together, I realized the downside with using the 2x4s – they weren’t exactly straight. So what I thought would be a nice, square construction ended up wobbly. Oh well – the weight of the equipment weighs it down.
It contains:
1: Patch Panel
2: TP-Link Gigabit Switch
3: Black Plate
4: Cable management
5: Shelf, router and WLAN AP
6: Shelf, VM-host (laptop)
7: UPS (not in the picture)
8: File-server
Still got a little room to spare.
While this has done wonders, I am working on a new rack shelf made up by MDF-boards instead – which will have a roof and walls, and maybe even a door. This way I can help keeping the noise level down a bit too.
