Raspberry Pi Rack - 6 node 3D Printed 1U Pi cluster

i'm rebuilding my home network with a proper rack and a dedicated ups instead of running raspberry pi scattered all over my office well here's my 3d printed rack mount solution for the pies holding some of them already there are links to all the parts and gear i'm using this video in the description below now before i put together this 3d printed rack i considered buying this one you rack mount plate for 40 bucks on amazon it looks nice but it only holds four pies and besides why would i spend money on this if i have a 3d print already i can build anything right ignoring the fact that it takes over 20 hours to print and half a spool of filament i was happy to find this cool 1u pi rackmount enclosure by russ ross on thingiverse he even posted videos about how to make it and he has this 1u version for six pies and a 2u version for 12 pies the coolest part was these little sliding trays that allow hot swap without having to remove the whole rack enclosure like you'd have to do with the pre-made one that i saw on amazon from his video it looked really nice and simple but as i've learned with all my 3d printing what at first seems easy could take days with many failed prints so i started off by printing one rack frame with the default settings kira didn't build any supports and that didn't turn out so well apparently it's a little tougher to build 0.2 millimeter bridges over a 10 centimeter gap than i thought so i tried turning the print over on another side and i stopped that print when i realized it was going to try to bridge the gap again in a different place so i added supports everywhere the next print went a little better but the print wound up curling up on the edges i have a lot to learn about 3d printing a few duckduckgo searches later i realized that i needed to re-level my bed again and add a brim and so i did that and look it actually worked so now just five more frames to print that'll take two days well i might as well get started on the trays too since those are kind of important to actually hold the pies in the rack i printed one with default settings and it actually turned out great on the first try but then i realized that i didn't have the required 12 millimeter m 2.5 screws to mount the pies so off to amazon to order a bag of them once they arrived mounting the pies to the standoffs was super easy finally i printed the two ears and they were thankfully easy to get right on the first try so next i had to assemble the frames and the ears together i ran to lowe's grabbed three foot of number 10 threaded rod and some nuts i handed the rod over to red shirt jeff and he made a nice show of sparks while he cut it with a dremel tool into two equal lengths then i got them back and assembled everything on my desk to my surprise everything fit together precisely just don't over tighten the nuts or start cracking the plastic i mounted the enclosure in the rack and slid in a couple pies there's enough surface on the front of each tray to put a nice little label on the pie that it's holding and i think that's a pretty nice touch it's easiest to power these pies through ethernet since usb-c port access is a little bit tough with these frames so i installed a poe hat on each pie and i'm using an aruba poe switch one that's actually really full featured and totally overkill for my needs right now but i'll be diving more into poe and this switch in particular in a future video so subscribe since i'm also running critical parts of my home network on these pies i wanted to make sure they stay up even through the brief power outages we get here in the midwest so i have the poe switch plugged into the apc ups which is complete overkill for my current setup but if you've seen any of my other videos you know that overkill is kind of the theme here getting this ups into the rack is a story in itself basically if you're going to get a supercharged ups like this one for free like i did maybe you should check the dimensions for the rails before you buy your rack and make sure your rack will fit the ups without major modifications in my case i had to drill out some holes chamfer the ends and cut some square tube to extend the back and the way i have it mounted means i can't use the ups's own mounting hardware either so it's kind of just sitting here on the rails i mean the thing's over a hundred pounds so it's not like it's going to slide out if i just touch it and you might notice there's also a 10 gig switch up on top of the rack and i'm wearing everything in this rack with either cat6a or cat 7 cabling and you might be wondering why does that matter for a bunch of raspberry pi's well spoiler alert i also have 2.5 and 10 gig network cards working on the raspberry pi compute module 4 so check out my existing videos on 2.5 gignet working on the pi and subscribe so you can see my future video on 10 gig networking on the pi and i've shown you the rack but what do these pies actually do well the first one here is my internet monitoring pi and it also runs pi hole and dns services for the house it helps me keep my isp honest and if you ask nicely in the comments i might even talk about the open source ansible playbook that i use to set it up the second pie is actually serving the raspberry pie dramble website piedramble.com but i'm going to move it back to my kubernetes pie cluster soon after i migrate that cluster into this rack there will be more on that later too and finally this little pie at the end is monitoring my starlink internet on a separate network through a separate dedicated poe switch for those who've been asking i'll have a full review of starlink coming really soon so there it is six pies in iraq well three right now the other three are almost ready to move thanks to russ ross for designing the rack and if you're wondering what other things i'm going to be doing in this rack well subscribe until next time i'm jeff gearling even through brief power outages i don't know why i sung the word brief there but oh there's a fire can you hear it this is the disadvantage of not being in my office you hear everything that happens outside and you can hear my 3d printer back there probably 10 gig networking on the pc dang not a pc six pi's ah sorry about that hopefully i didn't drop a few packets there my legs are killing me

Channel: Jeff Geerling

Views: 285,983

Keywords: raspberry pi, rack, rack mount, rackmount, cluster, 3d print, 3d printer, printed, enclosure, k3s, kubernetes, k8s, starlink, monitor, monitoring, pi-hole, pihole, dns, homelab, home network, networking, server, servers, 1u, 2u, russross, thingiverse, ender, ender 3 v2, printer, frame, tray, hot swap, hot plug, poe, aruba, switch, router, cable, plug, apc, ups, battery, backup, cut, red shirt jeff, dremel, maker, make, design, build

Id: LcuNc4jz-iU

Length: 6min 5sec (365 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021