[57north-discuss] Space rack/server

[Hibby]

On Mon, 21 Oct 2019, at 1:41 PM, Iain R. Learmonth wrote:
> On 20/10/2019 16:29, Hibby wrote:
> > I know we’ve got a couple of racks in space already, but I’d like to gather thoughts and ideas on consolidating all the hardware into a single 21U or 42U rack,
> 
> I believe we now have the space for this. Considerations remaining are:

In terms of the 4 points, these are good questions, and I hadn't thought that far ahead, but it's why I wanted it to come to the list. 
 
> * how long will we have the space for this?
No idea!

> * do we have power for this?
We should probably wait until we get our first power bill and find out how much a kWh is, and then we can plan accordingly
> * do we have cooling for this?
Aircon in the room. In terms of cabinet-mount cooling, some thermostaticaly controlled fans if we're doing it properly?
> * can we do something about the noise?

Noise can probably be managed by distance from us if we're spreading further wide, or asking nicely if we can put it in a cupboard and playing around in the comms room. We might want to look at consolodating all the noisy/dirty equipment in one corner.


> > This should let us mount our router, core switch and servers as required in a single place.
> 
> Ok. We should plan this out, we might end up still with a need for two
> racks if we're going to have distribution to the wall ports. The current
> space router is also a GPS-powered NTP server, and an APRS IGate, it
> won't benefit from being enclosed in a metal box.

I was only suggesting it all go in one place so we can consolidate down to a single rack. 
 
> > Is this something we can ask around the local community for do you think? Does anyone have any good starting points? I think the rack we used to have was 800mm deep, I’m not sure that’s a good starting point!
> 
> I think I would first want to see answers to the 4 questions above. If
> you just wanted to get the rack and put your server in it, fine, but if
> you want to also start building this out and see it more as a service
> for hackerspace members, that is going to need more forward planning.

Definitely needs forward planning. I don't just want to buy, beg, borrow or steal stuff and end up with hardware we don't know what to do with in 6 months time. This is part of my idea about a 21U rack - it's a bit more convenient to move and live with in a smaller location than a full height rack, but it straps us for expansion... But then, are we beginning to get into the business of offering members COLO at that point?