Over the last few months I’ve been on a steady march to increase my server capacity at home. Why? I’m not entirely sure why. How about it’s fun? 🙂

I decided to take a plunge into the deep end and get a rack for home. Getting the rack took up more space for just one or two servers, but as I add infrastructure it is much more compact. I went with the APC NetShelter VX 25U rack. I wanted to get a rack that had good depth and solid build. It also has removable sides and doors to make it very easy to get into. Overall, I like it a lot but it’s very heavy. Hopefully I don’t have to move it anytime soon.

We disposed of a bunch of servers at work and gave people an opportunity to get some in exchange for a charitable donation. I picked up four machines (they are the four Compaq 1U machines). This required the addition of another 1500 VA UPS which I just put in tonight.

Everything is working very well. I’ve got enough cable off the back to move it about 10 feet out into the room for access. The cable management in the back is a mess, but I’ll deal with that later. I decided to keep everything on the top half and leave the bottom open for later additions.

It’s all pretty loud but luckily I don’t care since it’s in the laundry room. It also generates plenty of heat. I’m done for a while now. The next thing I could see adding is an external disk enclosure to add a couple of terabytes of network storage.