Trials and tribulations of a DIY 1u server

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:

Tyan s7002 Server Mainboard

The following components were selected:
* Norco RPC 150 1u Server Chassis w/ 4 hotswap SATA drive bays
* Intel XEON E5520 2.26GHz
* Dynatron 1u Heatsink
* Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz
* Tyan s7002 Server Mainboard
* x4 Hitachi Deskstar 500GB SATA Hard Disk Drives

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 iPhone Developer Workshop

image courtesy of Apple

[SiliconRepublic] reports that On the 23rd and 24th of April, Digital Circle, in conjunction with the Digital Media Forum and Create Ireland, are holding Ireland’s first iPhone developers’ workshop in both Dublin and Belfast.

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.

read more at [devdays] via [siliconrepublic]

Omegle – Exactly what your mom told you to avoid

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.

@dubtwestival pics n’ things

I went to the Dublin Twestival (@dubwestival on twitter) last night. It’s described as a ‘festival’ of twitterers to meet, drink and chat, and to give to charity.

In fairness ‘festival’ is a bit of a stretch, the Dublin Twestival was hilarious for the pure fact that me and Phil were quite possibly the youngest people at the event, of about 120+ and had somewhat of a 30-40s singles club vibe for a while.

That said, it was good fun! Free drinks were definitely had, while they were available. It was all for a good cause, the water charity, so a couple of raffles were held…..I won twice!!! how awesome is that?!

We spent most the night just joking about how we were the youngest there, talking geek, and how the crowed seemed much more ‘normal’ than we expected.

I won a ‘vibrating directors chair’ and a normal wooden directors chair – carrying them home, in addition to my bag which was already overladen with two laptops (my new laptop was delivered to work a couple of hours earlier), after having a few drinks, was…interesting!

Met a couple good people too: @redmum @martharotter @qhussain @kevin_noonan

Heres a few pics I took with my blackberry (not an iphone!! )