Network Rack Installation - Start to Finish!

welcome to crosstalk solutions my name's chris and i am very very excited for this video now i say that in a lot of videos but this time i really mean it and the reason i really mean it is because we are going to be building out my office's brand new nave point 15u rack so this is a brand new networking rack that i'm putting in my office for the purposes of having a secondary test network or i should say for housing all of my test network equipment for all of the stuff that i do here on youtube now i still have my original 12u star tech quiet rack it's actually behind the camera right over there in that corner of my office and i'm still going to use that for all of my production equipment the stuff that i'm not moving around and changing out so frequently this one will be for anything that i'm testing it has a lot of capacity 15u capacity for all of the stuff that i do here and i've got a whole bunch of new equipment that i needed to put somewhere so this is going to be absolutely perfect to foot that bill in this video we're basically going to be going through the process of populating this rack from top to bottom or bottom to top more realistically i have some new equipment that we're going to talk about i have some new sort of rack technology to talk about we're going to cover all of that in this video also you notice i have my 6u ubiquity toolless rack that i just did a video on not that long ago we're going to be migrating all of this equipment into this rack as part of this process so let's go ahead and get started but first if you enjoy this kind of content make sure you like and click subscribe down below if you'd like to see more videos just like this we try to do two to three different tech videos every single week little guest appearance by my dog turkey every once in a while including right now also if you're not following us on twitter make sure you follow at crosstalk sol for all of the latest updates all right so let's start out by talking about this new rack this is the 15u performance series rack from nave point the cost was about 320 for this rack and it has the 450 millimeter depth so it's actually way less deep than my existing startech rack it's gonna be fine for you know switches and like anything that's like sort of udm uh depth like this thing right here but if you have like a 1u dell server or something like that this is going to be way too short for that type of equipment it's really just going to be for networking equipment only they do however have a 600 millimeter depth version of this same rack if you do need some sort of extra length in the back there there's some stuff for instance that i'm going to be putting in this rack that i'm not quite sure if it's going to fit exactly and if it doesn't fit in here i'm just going to have to keep it in my startech rack on the other side of the room this knavepoint rack came disassembled so it comes in a box you have to put the whole thing together putting the rack together took me about an hour and a half it was a lot of you know screwing in nuts and bolts all over the place but it was relatively easy to do and i found the construction to be fairly solid it's not really even all that heavy when it's put together but i did have to have help you know taking it from where i put it together in my garage up to the stairs just because of how sort of big and awkward it is but my wife and i got it up the stairs uh very very easily all right so now i'm going to switch to a different camera and let's take a look at the innards of this 15u nave point performance series rack okay so again this is the nave point performance series 15u rack with the 455 millimeter depth you can kind of get an idea of the depth scale here it has side panels that come off they lock and come off so here we can unlock them and then they do come right off for easy access the back however is bolted on so if you need access to the back of your equipment that you can't get to through the sides either side you're just going to have to take the back off of this thing entirely down on the bottom we can see that there's a place for a grounding wire there's also a hole for cable management coming out the bottom of the thing there's no hole for cable management in the back of the device but if we move up top there is a separate compartment for or a separate hole for cable management up top now i have that one closed off because i think i'm going to have something on top of here we'll talk about that in a second notice there are also two fans in here now these are pretty beefy fans let me see if i can get in there and get a shot of these yeah there we go so now you can see the underside so this is looking up to these fans uh they're pretty beefy fans but when i posted about this rack on twitter originally a few people said that they have this same rack or they have a similar rack and these fans are actually quite loud so of course doing recording in here on a regular basis and whatnot that means i'm either just going to not have to i'm going to have to not run the fans or i'm going to have to swap these out for quieter fans which i think i might try to do that you know find some noctua fans that'll fit this form factor or something like that but it does include fans if noise is not a problem i'm sure these are beefy enough to uh to help direct the airflow out of this rack all right so coming around the front of the rack we can unlock it and open it up and you can see all of the sort of rack rails are labeled from one down at the bottom all the way up to 15u at the top and there's also a second set of rack rails in the back in case you want to rear mount anything such as i'm going to be doing with my pdu there's the cable management hole out the back bottom of the unit and this unit also has casters down here so it is on casters although you don't need to use these casters there are sort of feet that have holes in the bottom that can be bolted down to whatever surface you're putting this rack onto for my purposes though i'm going to use these casters because i'd like to have the ability to roll it around if i need to all in all it's a pretty standard rack i'm happy with the construction quality of this unit and the only thing i'm unsure of now is how loud those fans are going to be and we will find that out as part of this video all right here's my old rack this thing is currently a mess i'm going to have to sort of re-cable everything in here but since it's my production rack i kind of need to do that late at night so that i can take down my main switch if i need to but look at the top here so i need to clear off this top because i have something new coming it's actually a 3d printer and this is where i want to put the 3d printer right now i have this truenast box that i use for speed testing when i'm doing wireless network testing this is 10 gig fiber connected to one of the old switches that is no longer in here so this is going to have to move over to the new rack i don't think this will fit inside the knave point rack but this is what i'm going to put on top of that rack instead so taking a quick peek inside you can see that yes everything is very cramped but i removed the rps unit that was at the very bottom then i've got my production nvr one two three you worth of space that i pulled equipment out of and then i've got this uh 24 port unified switch and then a shelf with you know my isp's modem my synology nas and then back there we have my edge router 4 which i'd like to i'd like to move out of the back of the cave there and sort of have easier access to it i also have a raspberry pi in here and as part of the 3d printing fun i'd like to figure out some sort of nice rack mount solution for multiple raspberry pi's so that i can use them as pie holes and other projects inside this rack okay and here is the general plan for the new rack this is the rack plan that i made up on patchbox.com you can go check out their rack planner over on that website so i'm gonna have my usp rps on the bottom since it's the heaviest unit followed by my qnap nas because this qnap doesn't have a lot of connections going to it i think it's just one or two cables then we have the udm pro which now i also have the udm se so i'm gonna have to fit that in here somewhere as well then i have a 24 port switch the patch box which we're going to talk about and i have a separate video coming out about that as well though i'm not sure if it's coming out before this video or after this video so keep an eye on the channel for that one i have a couple of new switches coming in a couple of spaces and then i was going to put a shelf in and i have two different shelves that i bought so we're going to see which one works better for this rack and then i was going to put that in at sort of the 10u rack height so that i've got space for you know extra stuff on top of that rack maybe even some stuff above it if i need to and then of course at the top back i'm going to be putting the unifi pdu pro that i don't think i'm supposed to talk about yet since it's early access now thankfully over the weekend i already did the most difficult part of this whole job and that was wiring in some cross connects to where this rack is located so you can see down here there used to be two rj11 jacks and in my house i'm lucky enough that whomever originally ran the rj11 jacks all throughout the house actually used cat5e for the wiring so it's simply a matter of tracing these all the way up into my attic and and then just rewiring them as cat 5e instead of rj11 which they were originally wired in so i have a couple of cat5e keystones i've labeled these so i have two cross connects that go up into my attic now when i say that was the most difficult part of the job this is why it's because those cross connects terminated in my attic in here so ducking down and crawling under you can see that i had to squeeze my six foot self all the way back there you know i use plywood so i can have a little bit of something to put my knees on as i fish those cables from way back there and then re-terminated both of them so that i could use them up at the industrial switch that i have in my attic and here is where those terminate this is the usw industrial switch and then here's the two new cross connects right here that i have connected into the switch as ports 3 and port 6. now this switch carries all of the vlans for my house so i'll be able to configure any vlan even if i want to put some of my production network over in that new rack that's going to be no problem because i can just run everything through this one switch which carries my starlink connection it's going to carry my test networks anything that i want can come through here and it makes it very very versatile for running various networks around the house now in re-terminating those cables i got the opportunity to check out the latest untwist tools the untwist tool version 2 which is available from techtoolsupply.com i'll put a link down in the description below to all the products that i feature in this video this has been sort of redesigned to be a little bit better than the first one and basically the idea here is that this tool makes it really easy to terminate ethernet cables because it straightens out those twisted pairs very very quickly and you don't have to do it by hand so here is the new version the improvements that they've made this used to just be a cross beam inside the hole and now it's segmented into six different channels to make it even just a little bit easier to separate out those twisted pairs also on the back side here they've added this sort of rubberized version so that when the cables come through they don't get snagged on anything back here and of course you also have my favorite part of the twist the untwist tool which are these channels right on the side that allow you to sort of straighten out those twisted pair cables once you've got them untwisted now you can buy just this head alone just the untwist tool and you can use this just basically by hand manually or you know sort of attach it to one of those multi-headed screwdrivers or something like that you can also buy it with this wow stick which is basically just a a little electric screwdriver like a mini electric screwdriver and when i was doing the untwisting with this thing it's really simple it's just like a quick like dot sort of like two pulses on this wow stick and the the cables are unscrewed so you can just basically get through your cat5 wiring uh uh you know in termination of the ends just a lot quicker with this thing here we can see the old one so here's the differences between the old and the new maybe i'll put this on like a white here so it's easier to see so here you can kind of see the differences between the old one and the new one the new one's just a little bit more robust it has more channels up and down the side it's got a little bit different head and again they've added this sort of rubberized piece at the back that allows you to uh not snag the cables on anything as they come through the inside channels but i would definitely recommend picking one of these up if you terminate ethernet cables on a regular basis all right all of that being said i think it's time we start building out this rack [Music] i started building this out and this rack is just too shallow for the patchbox 365. now this isn't a problem with the patch box or the rack they're just incompatible with each other if you look back here especially given like the size of the rps cable that has to be back here uh i could probably like you see it's very very close i need about an extra like centimeter and a half here and i do have the space in the back but it would really leave me with like no space back here whatsoever for any of the cables that need to go up and down so that leaves me two options number one re-route all the cables around this device or just don't use it at all so uh i figure i'm just gonna put it in my other rack that is a lot deeper the other thing is notice how these stick out here even if i was able to get this on these might not work with the front of the door right there right so these are sticking out sufficiently far enough that i would really have to move these rails back a couple notches for the rj11 and fiber ends to actually work without them like actually hitting the door here so we're gonna pull the patch box out of here and i will get it set up in my other rack and we'll do testing of this device over there the other issue is that the patch box comes with these cable management arms here that are made to sort of slip in behind it and as you can see if i put the cable management arms on they're going to stick out further than the front door of this rack so all in all this patch box just will not work for a rack that is 450 millimeters in depth uh if i had the 600 millimeter depth rack i'm sure it would work just fine but instead i will just move this thing over to my main production rack and i'll make good use of the patch box over there so if you've ever done any work on network racks one thing that we can all agree on is that standard cage nuts really suck they're just they're tough to put in they're even harder to get out they can cut your fingers if you're not working with them properly so one of the things that i'm using in this build is the rack studs i've done videos on rack studs i've talked about them before i really like the rack studs product and they sent me their newest version which i'm using in this rack let me show you what i mean all right so here is the rack studs series 2 duo this is the latest version of rack studs and it says duo because it's both the sort of top and bottom screws of a 1u mounted device in one piece of plastic essentially and so the way that this works is the little tab here depresses you can see that it you can sort of squeeze it together so you lock the bottom in first and then you squeeze it and then this top portion pops into place just like so there you go so now this rack stud is in place and then you have a couple of screws that you can screw on then you have a couple of screws that you can screw on right over the top and you put enough torque into these and it holds your devices in place these things have a pretty impressive amount of weight they can hold and i've never had a problem using any of the versions of rack studs so i was happy to try out these new ones and i actually like the black aesthetic of these guys and i'm glad that i'm using them in this rack i do want to show you one other option though because patchbox themselves also makes their own cage nut now this one is metal and the way that this one works is it clips in on the side and then this goes sort of over your rack and clips and holds it in like so let me show you how this one works so we put this one in we lock it in over here and then it slides around the corner of the rack right here and locks into place and then they have their own screws that then go over the front as well so two options for you i'm not sure which of these is better they both seem to work perfectly fine i'm not sure which of these is more or less expensive than the others but this is the rack mount series 2 duo and this is the slash dev slash mount solution from patchbox all in all though i just recommend getting some sort of these type of device because it just makes putting devices in and out of the rack it makes putting your equipment in and out of the rack just so much easier so i also wanted to put a rack shelf into this rack and i bought two different racks from knavepoint but this is gonna be a real easy choice because this one has the same problem that the patchbox did in that the rack is really too shallow for this size shelf you know i can get it in there and it actually does clear the back so it wouldn't be a big issue if there weren't cables like these power cables running down the back of the rack it's just it needs to be shorter than this so the other one that i got was this uh nade point 1u rack and you can see it's definitely a lot more shallow and so i'm going to put this in right about here at the sort of 10u point just to have a rack that i can put put equipment on all right that is absolutely gorgeous this rack is definitely coming together however i did turn on the fans now normally or sort of with the ambient sound inside the rack my little db meter here shows about 55 or 56 db when i crank on the fans it pops up to about 70 db so it's definitely like a 15 db increase when the fans are on [Music] but i do have it plugged into the pdu in the back there the pdu that i cannot talk about since it's early access uh but i have it plugged into that pdu and i'm able to control the fans being on or off through unify so i just basically have them off for now and i'll think about replacing those fans as we move forward as far as everything else this network is mostly complete except for one thing and it's that i want some fiber connectivity but look at the clearance over here it might put too much bend in a fiber cable when i have the front of the rack closed so unfortunately i think i'm gonna have to move the front rails back one notch which is actually a lot of work because i essentially have to take everything out of the rack and then put everything back into the rack in order to do that but better to do it now and have that extra space i should have i should be okay in the back let's take a look in the back so here you can see the clearance in the back i definitely can go back another centimeter with all of this equipment the longest piece of equipment is the qnap nas as well as the usp rps and those still have about six or seven centimeters of extra space so i should be able to pull this back one notch right here and still be okay so i think i'm gonna go ahead and do that now so that i don't have to worry about it later [Music] so [Music] all right so that was definitely a pain but i did get it done i ended up only moving these racks back one space two spaces was just a little bit too much i also had to pull the rps so the usp rps has those really thick cables for connecting to the other equipment and i'm gonna just put it back in my other rack because this is a test rack i don't really need the power redundancy for my test equipment so now i have the usp rps plugged into my old rack and it is doing redundant power for my unvr my production unifi protect unbr server that's right above it there the next thing that i need to do i want to get the patchbox in here but i gotta take this switch down here and this switch has all of this disgusting junk of cables hanging out of it so that is going to be quite a project in and of itself not to mention this is the main sort of core production switch for my home network and so yeah it's gonna have to be done at a time when i can actually tear all of this apart move the switch down put the patch box on top of it and then use the patch box to sort of connect everything all back together alright so that is what we're going to do next [Music] [Music] here's where we ended up with my old rack i have the usp rps on the bottom and that is acting as a secondary power supply for the unvr that is directly above it right above that we have my usw 24 port poe switch followed by the patch box again check out my patch box video that has already been released right above that we have a new shelf that was installed on top of the shelf i put my synology ds-1520 plus nas as well as two of my raspberry pi's one of these is home assistant the one in the back and the one in the front is a pie hole and then moving up we now have much cleaner access to both my comcast business modem as well as the edge router 4 and i even have an rj11 so my comcast business service comes with a couple of pots lines that i use every very once in a while for testing and all i have to do is plug in this rj11 cable into whatever phone i need connectivity to all right let's move over to the new rack now and see where we ended up [Music] so let's take a look at where we ended up at the very bottom here we have the qnap qgd 1600p followed by my udmse usw pro24 udm pro i added a u6 light access point right there just for this test network and then moving up we have my shelf as well as the g3 flex camera and then a couple other pieces of equipment that i just cannot talk about you'll also notice that i ended up going with leds right in the side here and i think the leds make it look really really good the leds that i went with were from wise so it's just the standard led kit from wise and i actually picked it up from home depot which is a little bit more expensive but it was kind of an impulse buy as i was getting some other stuff i think it looks absolutely gorgeous though that's going to do it for this project for now but i'm really never going to be finished with this test rack it's always going to be a work in progress as i have new equipment that i'm testing moving in and out of this rack rewiring the good news is though there's really easy access to this rack with the sides that can pop off and none of it is going to be interfering with my production network which is super super important we don't want to accidentally bring down something that we're not supposed to so links to everything that i mentioned in this video will be down in the description below if you enjoyed this video make sure you give me a thumbs up and subscribe to crosstalk solutions for two to three brand new tech videos every single week alright that's gonna do it for this one we'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: Crosstalk Solutions

Views: 120,767

Keywords: network rack installation, crosstalk, crosstalk solutions, network rack installation guide, home network rack installation, network rack installation tamil, network rack fan installation, diy home server rack, diy home network, diy home network rack, home network rack, network rack, network rack build, network rack install

Id: QQmoZ1GrgA0

Length: 27min 19sec (1639 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022