How to make a server room at home like Linus from Linus Tech Tips?
- Find an empty room
- Throw in all PCs you've got
- Toss in a shitload of cables
- Praise unraid
- Add some more cables
- Set it on fire
Make sure to post a multi-part video to youtube after each step.
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I'm in a 2 bedroom apartment. So one room is dedicated towards computers and the server cabinet.
Step 1. consider if you actually NEED a server room, or if you just need a place to put a desktop tower that's out of sight.
What are your needs? Do you need a bunch of storage, or do you want to run a bunch of VMs, or maybe do you want a PfSense firefall? You can combine most all of these things. In fact, I have done all three of those things in one machine. Don't jump straight to, "I need a home server room," without actually evaluating what you need to get done.
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Plan for cables to run from server room to your desk.(Displayport dies after 5m).
Buy a Rack case for you main PC. Like = Xcase 4000
Start to learn ZFS and FreeNAS to make a low cost NAS. Down the road add a SFP+ NIC for connecting PC with NAS for 10Gb/s.
Install Plex.
For now throw your racks/pcs onto an elevated something boxes, table. When you get like 3 or more servers, racks, switches start searching for a cabinet.
Be prepared to pay ALOT of money.
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you forgot :
destroy several motherboards trying to setup pfsense with a server psu. and post video on youtube of your (pathetic, but entertaining) failure
spend some 17G on a man sized ups so you can run for days with no a/c power
make sure you line the walls with shredded cloth, while it may be fire retardant, if the dust off it gets airborne it may be explosive. (flour wont burn if you put a torch to a pile of flour. blow the dust in the air then light the torch. boom)
pay an electrician to run more power into the room and possibly upgrade the circuit breaker box, and while (s)he's at it , run some cat 7 to every room.
pay the utility company $$$ per month.
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Thanks guys for helping 
I'll try to build it next month if I don't buy much expensive laptop 
What do you think about refurbished server components?
The great el cheapo route.
The only used server components of hesitate on is power supplies, HDDs, fans, things that usually fail first.
CPUs, racks, switches should be fine.
highly recommend looking for local used deals before going out to ebay or refurb sites. in my area, for example, you can get a full 42u enclosed rack for ~ $100, if you're patient enough. same for decent servers.
when it comes to servers, recommend you stick with ddr3. you'll see a lot of poweredge 1950-era things, but ddr2 is too old nowadays.
on another topic, you wanna buy some poweredge 1950's ?
I'd say it highly depends how loud you want it to be - how loud it can be.
if you have basement - thats where things should go.
For start you should get a rack (depending how big you want your 'datacenter' to be)
I recommend getting full depth 35" deep racks. (in those all your servers will fit.) -- most real rack servers are around ~30" deep.
To start with you should get this one: (I have it - its good enough for 6 2U servers)
or if you think you'll have more servers/racks get 27U or 32U rack
Once you have it, start moving your PC's into rackcases like those:
Next step, get storage array or build one yourself.
Some of the rosewill cases have decent hot-swap bays for doing it
(so you may not need to buy a dedicated hardware - but simply a crappier mobo with cpu and raid card)
Next is cooling...
You need to find a way to get rid of the hot air.
I recommend running custom watercooling loop with large radiator (like myself) through all your machines - if possible even put the radiator outside. Other option is to put air-duct intake and outtake on different sides of your home/basement etc. (don't mix air, and don't let it be stale air - as you'll heat it all up very quickly - quicker than you think)
Noise
If you have it at home, not in basement or garage - you will fight it. I recommend using premium car noise concealing isolation foam. Its very good and cheap.
Network:
Get older switch like this one
Don't </sarcasm>
Used stuff on Ebay and GovDeals and Craigslist and such is awesome. Racks are ridiculously expensive so if you are only going to have 1-2 servers and a pfSense box, maybe it's not worth it to spend money on a rack. Another disadvantage is that tower servers (or refurbished workstations, basically tower machines in general) are considerably quieter than rack mount servers. If your "server room" is a closet near your bedroom or your kitchen, you'll probably have to put up with the jet turbine noise of a couple rackmount servers depending on which ones you get.
If you want a networking lab and a more production-ish server room, I would recommend doing your server room like you're saying but then have one dedicated machine for running GNS3. That way you're not experimenting on your production network.
This. Although the one exception is routers. DDR2 is probably good enough for a pfSense machine unless you plan on running absolutely insane throughput across your router. But for normal servers get DDR3, and if you've got spare parts already maybe try to pick up machines that don't use ECC RAM since it's a little more expensive? If you can afford it that's great, but don't make the mistake I have made so many times and forget to consider whether the machine takes ECC or non-ECC RAM.
well, yes; but my point wasn't "ddr2" specifically. the whole machine is too old. for example, any server that takes ddr2 is likely to be too expensive (power-hungry) to use 24/7 for pfsense. (on the subject of "good enough for a pfsense machine," you probably don't need to dedicate a server to pfsense at all.)
i've got a bunch of 1950's, and it's fine because I only use them for screwing around on (i.e., they're usually turned off).
Yeah, you're probably right. I have a pfSense machine on a VIA Mini ITX board, a little tiny embedded thing I found in a friend's garage, so mine doesn't use much power at all but a DDR2 server is probably going to use the same amount of power as a small fridge lol
In this day an age I am not sure why anyone would want a server room in their house - there is no need.
- Build a decent spec workstation and fill with CPU, RAM, & Disk
- Install Hyper Visor and create VM's & VLAN's etc.
- Deploy a couple of extra VM's in your favourite cloud provider for temporary scale-out when you occasionally want to run something more intensive than your VM's can handle.
- Reap the rewards of gaining modern IT/Sysadmin skills that most companies are now craving
Just my tuppence worth.
Used is good. Exclude hdd's, maybe PSU's other than that you are good to go. For instance a monster of a server would be an e5-2670 i have one. Total overkill for only NAS. On the other hand the motherboard is a problem. It's expensive. i got a dual socket asrock one for 360EUR. But than again you will save hunders of dollars/eur on ram 50 EUR for 32 GB ECC 1333mhz xDDDD.
The second option is a nice used r710 look at r/Homelab subreddit. It's epic.
Rack cabinet definetly used don't throw 700 EUR into a new one. Buy used.
Thanks guys for helping
I'll build one little server within few months if I find some time to build it