Building your own computer, that’s relatively easy; building your own server is only a little harder; building your own 1u rack-mount server for colocation – that’s a whole new level.
42u Dell Data Cabinet
A few years back -maybe two, I got a real steal on ebay for a Data Cabinet. One of those badass cases that houses upto 42 servers in one glorious case. For around 500eur (560 if you include delivery) I bought a 42u Dell Data Center Cabinet, a UPS, a KVM, rackmount monitor/keyboard, two Switches and a bucket load of cat6 cables. It was only the beginning, ever since I’ve been eager to fill it to capacity with some serious hardware.
This summer I decided the time was right to thrust myself into a bit of debt and fill out the cabinet with some proper hardware, so I began selecting components for a server or three. For this post I’ll just focus on the 1u servers as they gave me the most trouble and perhaps something to be learned can be passed onto others from my experience:
As the proverb goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail” and so it was with the components I had selected. I hadn’t sufficiently researched the Tyan mainboards in question, had I done so I would have known that they *require* two 8pin EPS12v connectors, so the power supplies I had ordered were never going to work out-of-the-box. To solve this, and to save any headache in returning the PSU’s I took a look at Maplin’s website.
4pin 12v Molex to 8pin 12v EPS adapter
I think we all have a bit of a love/hate thing going on with Maplins in Ireland, they have some really great stuff – all the electronics components and obscure cables you could ever need, its just a shame that they shaft us for it. They’re still working off what can be best described as a 5yr old exchange rate between UK and Ireland prices and have no intention of changing it so it seems. They’re prices are just silly sometimes, but I digress. I bought one of these, a 12v Molex to 12v 8pin EPS cable adapter (£2.99 UK, €4.99 Eire).
And it works marvelously! I would however advise anyone using one of these cables to absolutely make sure that no other devices use the same rail (ie: dont connect any other devices to any additional connectors on the same cable) as overloading it could be disastrous to your motherboard/cpu. I connected some fans to mine but the draw will be such that it should have little to no affect on it, and besides, I have only one CPU in this board at the moment so I’m not worried at all.
Another problem I found was that the motherboard faceplate just simply did not fit the chassis, and the set that came with the Norco RPC-150 didnt suite the Tyan s7002 board. So I didnt use one at all. Ultimately its just a fascia, it serves no real function so I’m happy to not have one.
I’ll end this now with a warning about 1u power supplies, they are incredibly hard to source. I now have a folder full of websites that have various degrees of 1u power supplies but the point I’m trying to drill into you here is that when your designing your 1u server, recognize that the more power it requires, the harder it will be to source a supply. Saying that however, Scan.co.uk and Insight were my top choices.
Things to take care of when building your own 1u server:
* Do your research, even when you get tired, don’t buy until your 100% sure everything will work. Unless you want to live dangerously… both are good choices.
* Most normal heat-sinks will not fit a 1u case, look for and purchase a heat-sink for your CPU that is specifically designed for a 1u chassis.
* Recognise that building a 1u server is not the ‘norm’, it can be frustrating, but take your time and you’ll get it right.
* 1u Power Supplies are the hardest component to source, find yours first and work from there.
DevDays 2009 is Ireland’s first iPhone developers’ workshop, hosted by Digital Circle, in conjunction with the Digital Media Forum and Create Ireland. Catering for everyone from complete novices to experienced hands looking for some extra advice, this free event gives attendees the chance to meet iPhone developers and interact with official Apple engineers.
Omegle is yet another Web 2.0 social networking experiment. Visitors are anonymised to the monikers ‘You’ and ‘Stranger’, such that your almost guaranteed to always be talking to someone new… and strange.
Omegle is essentially an ajax chat portal where you are more than encouraged to talk to strangers, thats the only people you can talk to.
There is something strangely intriguing about talking to absolute strangers, that you know nothing about and who also know nothing about you. It does have some negative drawbacks, as would any site based on such a minimalist concept, namely spammers and for some unknown reason alot of non-english speaking people trying to learn english, mostly Chineese for some reason.
If your bored, why not give Omegle a go, worst thing that can happen is you’ll purpetually be accused of being a 57 year old pervert.
It was only a matter of time that someone would hack together a system to link up a Neural Impulse Actuator (NIA) by OCZ to make a pretty simulation of a mind controlling the input of a computer program.
This is a video of mind-control of the Besmoke fluid simulation project.
The Awesomer linked me onto this blog about (conceptual) open source phone development. It seems to be a blog dedicated to conceptuals of how an opensource/mozilla phone would look and operate, in association with Mozilla’s concept series.
The Mozilla Phone is an experiment in the open-source development of a conceptual phone. Put in motion by Aza Raskin of Mozilla Labs as part of its Concept Series, the project is led by Billy May as well as the combined insight of all those with an idea and a keyboard (and maybe a Wacom). While some of the problems will deal with industrial design, a great deal of the focus will be put on physical interface issues and basic user-phone interaction.
The Singularity University is a cutting edge university, with a multi-dicipline facaulty and curriculum, its possibly the best example of the ultimate learning environment. An environment where the smartest and most passionate people from around the world join to learn from some of the best minds on various subjects.
The Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanitys grand challenges.
I’d love the oportunity to be a student at Singularity-U, but the entrance requirements are necessarily strict, with only 30 students permitted in the first year and 120 the year after.
If your interested in making the world a better place, and working with some of the brightest minds of our age, you might consider the [Singularity University]
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a network of microchip transponders, readers, and system software that makes possible the regular exchange of data.
Each RFID transponder, or a tag, is implanted with an integrated circuit (IC) and an antenna. The IC is encrypted with a unique electronic product code (EPC) that is equivalent to an electronic lineage, setting it apart the tagged item from any others in the world. When a tag comes into the range of an RFID reader, proprietary information is passed on through an antenna to a reader that consecutively supplies data to a central computer for processing.
RFID technology was firstly developed for armed forces during World War II, and it has spread out into trade, medical, education, automotive, defense, snack food, and travel industries. It has been expressed as “wireless bar coding,” but actually, even basic RFID beats bar coding capabilities by far. RFID scanning can be done from larger distances than those in bar code scanning. RFID eliminates the need for line-of-sight reading that bar coding depends on, and RFID systems can provide a range of up to 90 feet. The Intermec Technologies Corporation, a designer and producer of RFID systems, has signed a contract with the government recently. European RFID systems are still more constrained than those in the U.S.
RFID systems are self-powered and they do not have any human involvement. They can scan several items at a time and furnish fingerprint-specific information about each. RFID systems are generally differentiated by storage and retrieval capabilities (read-only or read-write and passive or active power sources) and by frequency- LF (low frequency), HF (high-frequency), or UHF (ultra-high frequency).
Read-only tags are limited to recovery of stored data, such as product lot number or an item description. Read-only systems can efficiently streamline basic production and supply chain operations. Read-write labels are designed with both read and write capabilities. In a passive system, an RFID reader produces an energy field that triggers activation and gives power to a tag.
A passive system is not so powerful and somewhat less dependable than an active system. An active system has batteries implanted in tags to power transmission of data between tag and reader. Active systems are more refined than passive systems and offer longer read ranges. They have other features such as temperature sensing and a longer operating life.
RFID provides detailed information on RFID, RFID Tracking, RFID Tags, RFID Technology and more. RFID is affiliated with DNA Testing Services.
image courtesy of 
