The Rack

Several weeks ago I bought a new computer rack (off of eBay for only 50 Euros!) to reorganise all my equipment in the computer room / laundry room. As I was going to be taking all of the equipment out to put the rack in, and then filling the rack, Desney decided that the room had to be redone (cracks filled; frames cemented; floor, walls and ceiling painted, ...). For weeks now Desney's been working evenings, holidays, weekends and even taking some time off work to finish the room. It's finished and it looks great!

Last weekend we were finally ready to put the rack in the room. The end result was quite painful!. I've been paying the price in pain ever since.


The last part of the installation was to rewire all of the Ethernet cables for the new placement of all of the equipment in the rack. Everything fits in nicely now and I'm very pleased with, and actually quite proud of, the end result.

For those of you who are interested in this sort of thing here's the inventory from the top shelf down:

• 16-socket Cat6 RJ45 wiring frame


• 16-socket Cat6 RJ45 wiring frame


• NetGear GS724T 24-port Gigabit managed switch


• NetGear GS724T 24-port Gigabit managed switch


• Cable modems for cable Internet connection and cable telephone connection


• Buffalo Terastation II Pro
  1 terabyte network disk
  All of our music is on this disk and accessed through our Sonos players throughout the house


• Iomega NetDisk
  250 gigabyte network disk
  The onsite backup of our server is on this disk


• Dell PowerEdge 400SC
  Our home file server
  (getting old --- to be replaced sometime soon)


• Seagate 500 GB external disk
  This is connected to the music server and holds the other copy of our music collection


• Dell OptiPlex GX520
  This is our music server and distributes music to the Squeezeboxes in the girls' bedrooms


• APC BackUPS ES 700 & APC BackUPS ES 500
  Uninterruptible Power Supplies
  These protect our peripherals from power cuts


• APC SmartUPS 1500 RM
  Uninterruptible Power Supply
  This is connected to the file server, the Terastation and the Switches to keep everything running during a power cut and with remote management


• Hidden on the top of the rack is the Siemens wireless phone which distributes the cable phone to the other 5 telephone handsets around the house and a NetGear DG834N wireless router which distributes the cable Internet connection to the network (the ADSL Internet connection is distributed via the router in my office).

What can I say? A Geek's paradise!!!