I Built a Home Server Rack! (And How You Can Too)

how's it going guys I'm Theo Joe and I think I've got a really fun video for you today so in previous videos you may have seen my home Network which is a complete mess there is just cables everywhere everything's just sitting on a shelf no cable management so I thought what better excuse to fix that problem in the most overkill way possible then by making a video about it so what I'm gonna do is walk you through the process of assembling and setting up a whole full-blown server rack not a huge one but a pretty decent sized one and then putting everything in it wiring it up I think it'll be really cool if you've never seen anything like this before and then hopefully it'll turn out a lot better than what I have now now Before we jump in I want to thank the sponsor of this video privacy calm which is a free service that lets you create virtual payment cards that you can use to buy things online instead of using your real credit card every time therefore protecting your banking and personal information you can learn more by going to the link privacy comm slash the Ojo or click that same link in the description so let's get started so in the beginning everything is just going to obviously be in boxes so we can kind of go through quickly what a lot of these things are obviously I have the big server rack itself I have a PD you a Power Distribution unit I have a couple shelves which I'm going to put stuff on I'll show you that later and then I just have some hardware for rack mounting other devices that I'll show off later all right now the first step is gonna be to build the assembly of the whole rack where everything is going to go this is probably gonna take the longest time we got all this stuff around here we got the instructions so I'll just kind of zoom through it time lapse so you guys don't have to sit through the whole thing obviously but let's get to it [Music] all right so it took about an hour and a half to put this thing together and a few missteps putting a couple of these bars on the wrong way like twice but it's all together now and it's actually the next day because I wanted to plan out the rack before I started putting anything in so I'll put a little diagram on the screen I guess to kind of walk you through what I'm when I'm planning for this now this is a 15 unit server rack if you're not familiar a unit is basically a standard height of equipment that goes in a server rack it's all standardized so there's actually notches on here and each whole of these is three makes up one unit so if you buy something that says 1u then you know it's gonna be the same height so you can fit 15 of those things into this one so you can really easily plan out exactly how much stuff can fit in it so the first thing I'm gonna put on right at the top is the patch panel so that's where all the wires from around the apartment are going to go into and then that'll make it a lot easier to just connect everything into all the switches and just make it really manageable then right below the patch panel I'm gonna have a cable organizer thing so that's where the cables will come out of the Patrick panel run around the back just a little bit more organized you'll see what I mean the next slot slot 3 will have the PDU that's the Power Distribution unit it's basically a glorified power strip that you can rack mount so that's where everything it's going to be plugged in and get the power and then that will be plugged into the wall in the fourth slot I'm gonna leave that free because I at some point probably plan to put in a UPS uninterruptible power supply so I want to leave a space for that and just you know maybe make it more manageable instead of putting everything right next to each other in the next slot which is gonna be slot 5 I'm going to put my net gear switch it's a 10 gig switch and I actually have to put that on a shelf I bought instead of rack mounting it because when I bought the switch about a year and a half ago I did not need the rack mounting hardware so I think I just threw it out and I don't think they sell it separately so there's going on a shelf then slot six is gonna have my big unify switch it's a 48 port yes I know it's overkill I wanted to future-proof it I didn't want to spend the money on it twice so I figured you know what if I ever get a house of my own where I can actually like run cables my own instead of you know renting then I wanted to have something that would have more than enough ports so that's why yes I did get one that I'm not using that many ports in right now but you know what if I get an apartment or a condo or whatever and I run like four ethernet cables to each room then that's gonna add up below the unify switch I'm gonna put another cable organizer so that'll just make it easier to run things from the patch panel up the end of the switch and keep it organized and hidden and it's a lot eight I'm gonna put my what is called the unify cloud key it basically is kind of like a little mini management server for my unify products so if you're not familiar unifies like an enterprise brand it's like prosumer kind of so the cloud key is a little server product they make that allows you to manage like they're at their access points the switches which is also going to be in here I have like a little security camera that sort of thing and they have a rack mountable kit for it that costs like half as much as the thing itself but whatever and then finally we have a bunch of free space all the way down to the bottom two units which is gonna have a double high two unit shelf and I'm gonna put a bunch of miscellaneous stuff on there so my router my little Intel nook server that runs like my starp smart home stuff my little Lutron light bulb controller hub thing and that'll be a pretty big shelf that I can probably add a bunch of stuff on to it I'm not sure if I'm going to put my Synology nas on the shelf I might just keep it where it is on the closet shelf because I don't know if I if I want it vibrating the whole thing and damaging the drives over time I don't know so we'll see about that but I think that covers everything so let's get to actually putting this stuff in alright so the way you mount things into a server rack at least the ones with the square holes like this is use these little cage nuts so these snap in the back you use the screwdriver to do it and then you just screw through the mounting bracket say you'll see how that works just like that so with the nuts in place you just put these in tighten it by hand first I'll try that yep alright so next I'm gonna put in the PDU I'm skipping a space for the cable organizer I'm still waiting on that to come in the mail so I'm having this face backwards so the plugs are actually in the back that way it'll just keep a little bit more neat I could have it facing the front but I think that would just be looking messy and it's easy enough to access all the stuff from the top in the back here so I'll just do it like this alright so next up we're gonna put in this shelf which is going to have the Netgear switch on it this actually came with its own mounting hardware so it came with these screws in these little extra washers on here that kind of sit in there was no instruction so I had to kind of look up how to put those on but should be pretty straightforward [Music] okay so up next I'm going to put in the bracket for the cloud key and that just mounts in the back here I'm gonna skip putting in the unify switch for now because I don't want to take down my whole network the whole time I'm building this so we'll put everything into it at the end [Music] all right so now we can put in this bottom shelf and then after that's all in we can start putting in all the actual electronics [Music] now since this is a pretty big shelf that goes back really far and it's actually heavier than it looks I'm actually gonna put a couple of these really long bolts in through the side in the back and underneath this so if it ever kind of bows down that these screws will hopefully just give it a little bit of support I'm surprised that it doesn't hook on back there at all in any way literally just sticks out so hopefully this will get it a little bit more support even if it's not really necessary all right so finally what I think is the hardest part is all finished so we got the whole frame together obviously the shelving the organization I ended up getting those cable managers you'll see how those work in a bit and so now we are actually ready to put in all the electronics which should be the fun part but we'll see how difficult it is before we get to all that though I do want to thank the sponsor of this video privacy comm it's a service I've been using for years it basically lets you create virtual unique payment cards to securely buy things online and has some really cool features that you basically would never see when trying to use a regular credit card for example you can 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should be pretty fun the first thing I need to do is disassemble my network which you can see here it's an absolute mess it's just sitting on a shelf in a closet no cable management whatsoever so it will hopefully look a lot better let's get all this stuff down and then I'll come back once it's all ready to get put into the server rack alright so here we have the big unify switch this is going to be going in here I already check to make sure it fits the spoiler alert it does I already put in the cage nuts so I want to do this quickly so there's not too much stress on this thing [Music] all right so for this switch I actually just used these bolts that I had because the screws that I was using for everything else were not long enough to reach through this is a really thick piece of metal so I just used these bolts this is not the proper way to do it but they were really long and they work so whatever if it works it works now luckily like I said the Netgear switch I don't have the mounting hardware I threw it out because I bought it like a year and a half ghost that's just gonna go on this shelf right here and that's all I have to do for that one super easy compared to last thing all right so everything that needs to be mounted is mounted the last thing we have to do is just put all that stuff on the shelf organize it as best we can just basically sit it here there should be enough room for everything all right so the stuff I have down here that I'll put in this is my untangle as a router slash firewall this is like a little Intel nook I think you pronounced it and you see this is a little server that runs like mostly my smart home stuff that's pretty much it this is a little Lutron Smart Hub that control some of my lights and this is a wink hub that also controls some smart home stuff and that's all that goes down on that shelf all right so first we're going to start by plugging in the power of stuff so you can see this is the back of the PDU the power distribution unit so we can just plug in all the cables and then figure it out later [Music] all right so now I think everything is in everything's plugged into the power it's not powered on obviously yet so the last thing we have to do is just run all the ethernet cables between everything get a little bit of cable management going for the ethernet cables at least [Music] well I think we got it all set and ready to go and put in its place and get up and running you saw at the end I was trying to debate which cables to use I wanted to use the shortest cables possible obviously those so there wasn't a lot hanging and I think it turned out really well the longest really ones that are most obvious are just the ones that run at the bottom and you know maybe at some point for the power cables there's quite a few hidden back there and maybe I'll just get some sort of like zip ties and organize them against the side somehow but I think from the front at least it looks really good so let's go put it away all right so when all is said and done we can take a look again at what this whole thing looked like before and what we have now and you can see obviously it looks a lot better in my opinion at least now clearly it does take up a lot more room than before so this is not something that everyone should or even would want to go and do but I'm personally really happy with it I ended up putting my nads on the bottom so everything is in one place and I think it looks really cool so I hope you guys enjoyed watching this video again I want a shout out to privacy comm for sponsoring this video be sure to go to privacy comm slash Theo Joe and get that five dollar credit for a limited time so thanks again for watching guys and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: ThioJoe

Views: 771,962

Rating: 4.7057161 out of 5

Keywords: technology, tech, home server, server rack, server rack build, home server rack build, home network rack, networking rack, home server rack, home network, network rack, diy home network, home networking, homelab, homelab server, homelab rack, home network setup

Id: TCiZjB9ZXgI

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2019