Building a mini home data center (cupboard)

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim Watts escribió:

Which he gave about as much attention to as advice about changing his sig-sep. Wasting your time.

[Johnny B Good]

The OP's idea about building a small "cupboard" for outside of his house to "store" a couple of servers in, is just a total folly (and for all the good reasons offered by the various contributors to this thread) which is why I never bothered to wade in with my own advice which would essentially have been a rehashing of all that's been said.

However, what prompts this contribution is the reference to sig separators which, in this case, is quite clearly the result of his anti(? ) virus software's attempt to not only hijack his news client's sig file to use as a bill-board but also to deliberately corrupt said sig separator to maximise distribution via quoted text in replies to his postings (or emails).

IOW, the blame can be laid squarely on Avast for deliberately breaking the sig separator. I've seen the same breakage on every such Avast afflicted posting so it seems extremely improbable to be just a mere coincidence that the error just happens to *always* be the same 3 dashes whenever Avast hijacks a sig file.

Still, I'm guessing that even when you point out the real culprit and suggest the 'offender' takes steps to prevent Avast from "taking the piss", you're just as likely to have this advice ignored, possibly even being berated for "questioning their manhood". Only rarely have I seen victims of Avast's piss take actually offer thanks and take action to stop Avast dead in its tracks in attempting to use their email/news client as a Bill-Board.

All I can suggest is that if you're ever tempted to 'criticise' a broken sig sep that's quite clearly the work of the associated Avast Bill- Boarding exercise, make it quite clear that the problem is primarily due to Avast rather than any implied suggestion of kack handed end user 'customisation'. You might still get berated for your pains but at least there'll be no doubt who the real culprit is in this game of malformed sig separators.

[Weatherlawyer]

Especially if he has a fire or a flood or burglars or a power outage or overheated pentium chips or Avast missed just one little bit. Or if his insurance company organised a bike race today.

[jrwalliker]

Oh. Were you stranded at home today? Or just massively inconvenienced?

John (Within the route)

[AlanC]

?m just looking

Hi Andrew,

You have had lots of good advice from many people. I know you were after a dvice on the construction side of things but I thought I would just add my personal experience on running servers outside of the house.

We had a garage attached to the house. There was the usual ventilation thr ough the garage door and the eves of the roof. I placed a dozen loft board s on the rafters (enough to fill just the central part) and put the followi ng devices up there:

2 servers (normal desktops re-purposed as servers) 1 firewall (another desktop running Smoothwall) 1 screen 1 keyboard 1 mouse 1 KVM (for switching between the servers/firewall) 1 24 port network switch 1 ADSL router

One of the servers was being used as a file server with 2 HD in a RAID mirr or (remember that RAID isnt for backup its for redundancy). Everything was powered on 24x7 (except the screen).

I ran this setup for about 10 years without any significant issues. The ne twork switch failed as did the on board NIC in one if the servers. It may have been caused by the environment or it may have just been one of those t hings.

Every few years I would take each machine down and give them a blast throug h with compressed air to clear out the dust and insects.

I did notice a very small amount of surface rust on some the PCI expansion card brackets.

On the days when we had very hot weather (doesnt happen that often) I would shut everything down until things cooled down a bit in the evening. This w as more for my own peace of mind. I never actually took a temperature read ing, it was just from how hot it felt when I climbed up there.

Its all changed now. We had the garage converted into a study with the bac k section partitioned into a separate computer room. It still can get warm in there. When we had our summer the other week it reached 35C in the com puter room (daughter has a habit of closing all the doors when she is in th e study while she is playing on the Xbox).

Alan

[Vir Campestris]

You have a 1900 too?

[Bob Eager]

No, but I have a stack of 1900 documentation on the other side of the room.

[Adrian Caspersz]

In mine, a workshop, I put kingspan in the rafters and insulated partition walls with rockwool including building a thick insulated sliding door that partitions off the rest of the garage.

Nice and cool even when it's barmy ouside.

[damduck-egg]

Is that when the residents of a mental hospital are walking past?

G.Harman

[Vir Campestris]

:)

It occurs to me we're probably the only two people here who've ever heard of George Felton!

Andy

[0345.86.86.888]

As is the use of a verb in where a noun should have been used. Out of every single incorrectly used word ever the one(s) that make(s) my toes curl is advice/advise mix-up....

:¬O

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , damduck- [e-mail] escribió:

[Johnny B Good]

I just assumed he meant "balmy" (oh, and also "outside"). :-)

[harry]

?m just looking

Why not just buy a fireproof safe for a couple of hundred quid?

[spuorgelgoog]

Okay for offline storage, but if you want to keep disks spinning you need cables and drilling holes in the fireproof safe compromises the fireprooffulness.

Owain