For the last four or so years I've had a full fledged server rack running at my house. i used it for a bunch of stuff: running self hosted applications, learning networking fundamentals and storing a bunch of completely unnecessary data for no reason other than "just because".
Here was one of the most recent pictures in all of it's over the top glory:
Eventually though there comes a time in every homelabber's career when they are standing in a hot room with loud server equipment blaring, a pile of hard drives and a spiders nest of network cables and they think to themselves: what the hell am I doing with my life.
Everyone think that it won't happen to them. Bright eye'd and bushy tailed people just getting into it as they scroll through 2U rack mount server listings on ebay. Oh, a 12 bay LFF server for $200 - don't mind if I do.
Well my day finally came. It's not a very interesting story really, mostly just standing in a room looking at this huge thing taking up all this space and decided that it was probably time to call it quits.
So without further ado I now present to you, The humble "Server Table":
Main server
My main server is my old gaming computer. I didn't even have to do anything, just stuck in a network card and a tiny GPU to get it to boot.
Oh and installed some new fans.
- AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor
- 32 GB of some ram I had
- 2x 1TB SSD in a ZFS Mirrored pool
- 1x 12TB HDD packed absolutely full of media
Router
This is still in it's 2U rackmount case for now. I plan on replacing it with a small Qotom 4 port once I have time to do that.
Switch
Same switch 24 port Mikrotik. Will probably replace this with something smaller, or just not. Whatever.
Cable Modem
It, like all cable modems, is shaped in the worst way possible making it impossible to put anyplace reasonable. So it juts sits here while I scowl at it's silly rounded design.
Guardians
The three amigo's here are the guards of the server table protecting it from the bad guys of the world:
- Dorothy number 2, the buff orphington chicken complete with Woody cowboy hat
- Tuxedo, the penguin from Kmart
- Lucas the spider
These three guard day and night without fail!