I've mentioned this before, but my first CoLo server was from a friend that built servers for a good sized hosting company back in the late 90s. He built it from spare parts but had no case for it. He hung the mother board against a dry erase board from the mounting holes with zip ties. He had a PSU sitting on his workbench with cables feeding up to the mobo. IIRC, the hard drive was suspended on the wall as well. In that vein, anything can be a "rack" if you squint at it hard enough and maybe tilt your head a bit.
LackRack is cute in that it works and fits, but the real home datacenter is wire shelving - one of THOSE bad boys can support hundreds of pounds AND have good airflow (and sneaky cable routing!).
I keep wanting to build this but I have seen people talking online that they changed the legs and they are now hollow and not really suitable for this.
That has made me very cautious to use this for any serious amount of mounting.
Edit: Apparently there is a section on that page about it, but does not give a ton of confidence that it won’t give me a lot of issues.
One really good alternative to racks is a flight case with integrated 4U / 8U rack. They're meant for musicians transporting audio equipment, so can be a lot expensive, but they're nice with front and rear panels that pop off, and are very portable. The bigger ones (12U and 16U) often come with wheels too which is nice.
I once worked in a hardware lab that used wire shelving for holding arrays of running machines, and a bad ground running through one chassis caused anyone who touched the shelf to get shocked by something very close to line voltage.
That shelf is more glue and fire retardant than it is wood. Its also really bad as a book shelf so it might still be superior in this role than the intended one.
I really don't want to be too much of a downer, but is this really just an HN post about someone putting something on a shelf?
You're not wrong.
How in gods name this article made it to the front page of HN is a mystery.
I mean, you can probably reduce any HN article to something that doesnt sound worthy of being on here if you want
I've mentioned this before, but my first CoLo server was from a friend that built servers for a good sized hosting company back in the late 90s. He built it from spare parts but had no case for it. He hung the mother board against a dry erase board from the mounting holes with zip ties. He had a PSU sitting on his workbench with cables feeding up to the mobo. IIRC, the hard drive was suspended on the wall as well. In that vein, anything can be a "rack" if you squint at it hard enough and maybe tilt your head a bit.
What you’re really here for is the Lack Rack:
https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack
LackRack is cute in that it works and fits, but the real home datacenter is wire shelving - one of THOSE bad boys can support hundreds of pounds AND have good airflow (and sneaky cable routing!).
I keep wanting to build this but I have seen people talking online that they changed the legs and they are now hollow and not really suitable for this.
That has made me very cautious to use this for any serious amount of mounting.
Edit: Apparently there is a section on that page about it, but does not give a ton of confidence that it won’t give me a lot of issues.
One really good alternative to racks is a flight case with integrated 4U / 8U rack. They're meant for musicians transporting audio equipment, so can be a lot expensive, but they're nice with front and rear panels that pop off, and are very portable. The bigger ones (12U and 16U) often come with wheels too which is nice.
Great idea, but my Billy's are all full with my LEGO builds. :-D
The mobo collectors are going to have to fight the vinyl enthusiasts for IKEA's Billy shipments.
Are Billy deep enough for vinyl? It looks to me like they're only 11.75" deep, not 13.
Reminds me of the LACK that is commonly used for server racks: https://www.google.com/search?udm=web&q=lack+rack
Nice fire safety and grounding. Wood is ideal for both. They should build data centers like this.
How exactly do you envision this going wrong?
The rack itself won't hold electrostatic charge, and if the devices themselves want to be grounded they can be grounded through their power supply
And wood isn't that easy to get to burn unless you turn it into small particles first
I once worked in a hardware lab that used wire shelving for holding arrays of running machines, and a bad ground running through one chassis caused anyone who touched the shelf to get shocked by something very close to line voltage.
I’m more worried about heat dissipation though.
That shelf is more glue and fire retardant than it is wood. Its also really bad as a book shelf so it might still be superior in this role than the intended one.