Make a $350-$550 mini server rack for $70!
Let's say you have some rack-mountable servers in your house. For example, you might have a web server for your corporate website, a file server for your terabyte of (un)pirated media, and sundry networking equipment. Let's say all of this gear totals 8U, or about 14" of vertical height.
If you're like my housemates and me, then the obvious thing to do would be to purchase a hulking, steel 42U (over 6' tall) server rack and put it in the the entryway of your house.
After a few years of cohabiting with the 42U monstrosity, we decided that it should be replaced with a smaller, 12U server rack. Ben decided to price this out and found this one ($565) and this one ($341). We looked at these racks, then at their price tags, then back at the racks, and then realized that we were about to drop hundreds of dollars on a glorified end-table.
So, why not just use actual end tables?
Hence, this Instructable. In a nutshell: epoxy together two of IKEA's CORRAS bedside tables. Two are needed because each is only about 15" deep, and most rack-mount servers are 20"-30" deep. The project is pretty simple because these end tables just happen to have exactly the right inside width to fit servers. They even come with handy shelves to set the servers on.
A few photos of the finished product are below (apologies for the crappy mobile phone photos, throughout; it's all we had on hand at the time):
Let's say you have some rack-mountable servers in your house. For example, you might have a web server for your corporate website, a file server for your terabyte of (un)pirated media, and sundry networking equipment. Let's say all of this gear totals 8U, or about 14" of vertical height.
If you're like my housemates and me, then the obvious thing to do would be to purchase a hulking, steel 42U (over 6' tall) server rack and put it in the the entryway of your house.
After a few years of cohabiting with the 42U monstrosity, we decided that it should be replaced with a smaller, 12U server rack. Ben decided to price this out and found this one ($565) and this one ($341). We looked at these racks, then at their price tags, then back at the racks, and then realized that we were about to drop hundreds of dollars on a glorified end-table.
So, why not just use actual end tables?
Hence, this Instructable. In a nutshell: epoxy together two of IKEA's CORRAS bedside tables. Two are needed because each is only about 15" deep, and most rack-mount servers are 20"-30" deep. The project is pretty simple because these end tables just happen to have exactly the right inside width to fit servers. They even come with handy shelves to set the servers on.
A few photos of the finished product are below (apologies for the crappy mobile phone photos, throughout; it's all we had on hand at the time):
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Like many pieces of IKEA furniture, these CORRAS bedside tables are made of a composite material. It's basically a paper core with thin panels of wood laminated to the outsides. The images below were excerpted from this paper, whch studied the strength of this material and its usefulness in furniture construction.
As the paper notes, it is strong and inexpensive. The manufacturing difficulty, however, is in devising a way to attach the panels together. IKEA's stuff, for example, has connection hardware integrated into special parts of the board to make joints that can handle the loads.
We go into all this detail for a reason. The face-to-face attachment that we want between these end tables requires joining the boards together in a way they weren't designed for. Imagine the end of the board in the picture below being the front or back of the bedside table. The cutaway part would just be covered with "cap" of wood, laminated on. Unlike solid wood or MDF, we can't just drill holes in the ends of each one, plug in dowels and glue, and push the surfaces together. There is no wood inside to drill into, and the veneer will just peel away from the paper under stress.
Instead, we take advantage of the large surface area of the top and bottom panels, epoxying metal rails to them to distribute the load on the joint across the entire panel. The next few steps in this Instructable detail how to do this.
As the paper notes, it is strong and inexpensive. The manufacturing difficulty, however, is in devising a way to attach the panels together. IKEA's stuff, for example, has connection hardware integrated into special parts of the board to make joints that can handle the loads.
We go into all this detail for a reason. The face-to-face attachment that we want between these end tables requires joining the boards together in a way they weren't designed for. Imagine the end of the board in the picture below being the front or back of the bedside table. The cutaway part would just be covered with "cap" of wood, laminated on. Unlike solid wood or MDF, we can't just drill holes in the ends of each one, plug in dowels and glue, and push the surfaces together. There is no wood inside to drill into, and the veneer will just peel away from the paper under stress.
Instead, we take advantage of the large surface area of the top and bottom panels, epoxying metal rails to them to distribute the load on the joint across the entire panel. The next few steps in this Instructable detail how to do this.
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You came up with a great solution to a problem I've been thinking about for some time. Thanks again!
A few friends and I are looking at putting together a 16U rack from scratch for some projects we have, and I was curious if anybody had already done it on here. Unfortunately, there is no IKEA near here, so this is not really feasible for me. Great instructable though!
Back to Home Depot for me :D
The Token Ring is just that much funnier because it's inches away from a GigE switch. It's gratifying to know I'm not the only one with a hardware collection like that.