Ok. This is how I'm gonna start. I'm gonna put these pictures up and ask for ideas and thoughts. I have a ton in my head but want to hear what you'd do first. I'll throw a couple specifics out there but other than that it'll wait till I finalize the design before I spill all the beans. So the basis for the project is the Cobalt RaQ which is a small 1u server that was released around 97 or 98. It was a full fledged web/email/ftp server and had a pretty successful run. Data centers were built from these things and there are still some in existence today. The internals will be gutted and replaced with new tech. The fronts and LCD displays will remain. The units will be liquid cooled (total number of units to still be determined). Cobalt was purchased by Sun (Hence the rack is from Sun). Some initial ideas are a rack of Virtual Servers connected to a virtual storage array. I currently have the rack and six of the cobalt units with 4 more on the way. Here's the pics. What would you do? Picked up a Raq XTR to hold the hard drives for the hard drive array. I'll probably pick another one up once I find it. There are some pictures below. I've started to give a little thought to the purpose of the machines function, but haven't decided completely yet. I'm pretty sold on the idea of making each machine run with Virtual Machines wear so it can serve many functions. But the whole running an operating system from a compact flash drive is pretty interesting to me as well..... So I'll still have to decide on that. As far as the physical hardware (motherboard, cpu, etc..) I'll be deciding on that more towards the end of the project. This will take me a couple of months and hardware pricing and chips will change between now and then. I'll build one of the servers up with the similar specs I'm going for just for a trial fit and go from there. Also still waiting for the rack to arrive, then I can determine how best to place the servers and how many I'll need. I've found a couple of 1 unit water coolers for the CPU, that was the part I wasn't 100% sure about. So that's handled. I'll probably also be running another machine in the side of the case that will monitor server health, water temps, etc.. as well as be the display for the system as the servers will be headless (not even a KVM), just remote access. It will have to be a self sustainable unit not relying on the cooling or power from the main unit, if something goes down, it should be able to report it to a display on the case. Still deciding also on a fold out monitor and rack, or to build the display into the case. Also as far as water cooling, trying to decide on running the ware through just a radiator to cool it or to submerge a coil in the tank and run a refrigeration setup in the side as well so it will really keep an eye on temps. I'm just not sure if it would cause the system to short cycle with a constant heat source......
I moved 3 servers down to a basement with 2 other guys from work to help a guy run business from home. 10 hours of hell since we had to unload each tower from location and put it all back in when we were at destination. Fun part was getting them down a cramped stairwell with a sloped ceiling and the ceiling in the basement was at different heights and they all had to be set up in a unfinished ceiling area behind all the basement clutter. You should paint the server since you have room to work with. maybe make it fridge like? Water cooling would be neat if you could do everything.
