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How to prettify an homelab into a rack? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 1 year ago by abeltramo to c/selfhosted

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I've turned a couple of old desktop computers into my homelab. They are currently "stacked" on top of each other with a Raspy, router and switch on top and a UPS on the side.

To my eye this looks "pretty enough" but it doesn't score high on the Wife Approval Rating and I would really like to turn it into a "pretty" little rack. Hence, the question: how to do it? Which parts should I get?
I'm mainly having a hard time finding some kind of "rack case" so that I can insert my desktop HW into it; should I buy a server and strip it out?

Just a few more info:

My homelab is extremely silent (since it sits close to my desk) and I would very much like to keep it this way. I absolutely don't want server fans screaming at me all the time.
It would be cool to have a "NAS like" enclosure for the NAS drives that currently sit inside a normal desktop case.
I'm UK based, I know in the US might be easier to get all this stuff, but any tip or help is highly appreciated anyway.

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[–] abeltramo 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for all the tips, this is exactly the kind of things I was looking for that I wasn't thinking about. I guess I'll go with 3/4U since it looks like it's the easy solution to fit everything in.

The last question I've got is about the Sata backplate that some of them have in the front, is that compatible with any home PSU/Motherboard or does that require some special HW? I guess for SAS I would need an additional PCI card in order to support it, right?

[–] GreatBlue 2 points 1 year ago

I'm happy to help.

SAS has its own connector. You would need a mainboard or PCI card with it, special cables and drives. For SATA you should be fine with the "consumer" power and data sockets. There is a SATA sockets witch combines 4 ordinary SATA interfaces. I'm not sure how its officially called, but you can get adapters for it.