My last network upgrade post was on 16th December 2022, quite a bit has changed since then and I forgot to document any of it, so I will provide an update here.
In September 2023, I purchased a larger 15U rack for use in my office, as I wanted a slightly deeper one so it could house my Dell R220 ii as well as have space for my new NAS server build.
These racks usually retail for around £150.0 on Ebay however I purchased mine direct from Linx-com for £75.00 plus £15.00 P&P.
The switches in the cabinet have also changed to a Unifi US-24-500W, Unifi US-16-XG and a Unifi US-Flex-XG.
I ran 10Gb fibre to the office as part of the EDPM roof replacement, so was now looking at leveraging that capability for my NAS and my iMac Pro with some 10Gb switches.
You will also note that my Kubernetes cluster has grown to 12 nodes, this now includes 3 x dedicated master nodes and 9 x worker nodes.
These are all Dell m92p tiny 1l units and I am sharing a power supply between two units, using some splitter cables that I made, using male and female 5.5mm plugs/sockets, so I only need 6 power bricks for the 12 nodes.
I have still not finished building the NAS, mainly because the fans in the server unit are too loud, as are the Dell R220 ii and Unifi US-24-500W, if I am being honest.
As such, once I had run a 10Gb fibre cable to the garage, as part of installing my East and West solar arrays, I decided to relocate the noisier items out there, where I would not care about the noise.
I already had an 8U desktop rack frame that cost me £10.00 that I purchased at the same time as my 12U rack enclosure and decided to obtain a 12U version of the same rack frame since this was much cheaper option than buying the rails separately.
I found a 12U rack frame on Ebay for £19.99 including P&P
The intention was to build my own rack frame underneath my garage workbench.
I purchased a couple of 2.4m lengths of ‘2×4’ CLS timber, cut them to size, ‘glueing and screwing’ as before, then attached the various sets of rails.
I did not need the rear set to be 12U as my compressor will be in the way of the bottom part of the racking, as can be seen in the last 2 photos.
The rack mount kit being shown is for the EMC KTN-STL3 that would not fit in the 15U office rack, I am also now able to use the full rack kit for the Dell r220 ii.
This is how the garage rack looks at present, although not everything is connected or powered on at this moment in time.
I need to obtain another UPS for the garage to provide some protection for these items from power outages.
I have reverted back to my 12U office rack using items that will fit inside that (350mm or less depth) and are silent (or close to it).
This is the design of the full network as it currently stands:
