Trygve.Com > Images > No Duct Tape
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No Duct Tape...
...but there's yogurt.
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Okay, yogurt cup lids.
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While I haven't done any formal studies on the matter, my wild, off-the-cuff guess
is that at 60% of the time involved in setting up servers out here at the treehouse
is devoted to overcoming the universal requirement for awkward, bad, or just plain
stupid mechanical design for computer cases. Personally, I find the whole thing at
least a little bit mystifying, because, in just about every (ahem) case, even
a small intrusion of rational thought and/or cursory examination of the components
the enclosure was putatively designed for would have resulted in a vastly more useful
design with no increase in materials or manufacturing expense.
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At least half the time, even shifting an errant bracket or mounting point by as little
as a quarter or eighth of an inch would have fixed a few design problems or at least
made them manageable.
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Stats:
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Servers: 28
Disk Space: 8.6tb
Domains: 464
Duct tape: none
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Where the yogurt lids come in is that they're decent electrical insulators and just the
right height to cover ill-placed mounting hardware that would otherwise short out the
motherboard of anyone careless enough to install it. I've also cut them appropriately and
used them to make mounting "hardware" to put drives and other components in proprietary
cases like the HP Netserver to the right. Even if I could still get the appropriate hardware
bits-and-pieces for discontinued models, it would be absurdly expensive for its minor
convenience value and it takes a lot less time to jury-rig a part that works than it does
to locate the official part number of the coveted bracket and then devote an afternoon to
experiencing the full range of the manufacturer's extensive collection of music-on-hold
selections before eventually locating the one person in the company who is in charge of
letting me know that the part is backordered and there is no estimate on when it will
even be available.
But I don't use duct tape in the servers, no matter how strong a following it
may have. According to the Boulder County Business Report, as of
2004, this oddball collection of hardware in my basement is the eighth largest
ISP serving the Denver Metropolitan area, so I have to maintain some
standards.
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Galvanized steel hanger tape, on the other hand, manages to find its
way into almost every x86-based machine.
Nearly every metal insert designed to hold hard drives in a standard case
appears to have been designed to limit airflow and cooling, make drive installation
awkward and difficult, not quite fit enough drives, place drives just outside the
reach of standard ribbon cable lengths, and finally, when hard drives are finally
wedged into its protesting personal space, it turns out that the insert cannot be
mounted in the case if you would also like to have memory installed in the computer.
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A lot of servers actually work better with memory installed; giving the would-be
server administrator the choice: "memory" or "hard drives" is a toughie.
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Consequently, I often end up stripping out the built-in mounting hardware and
inserts and building the internal mounting structure out of hanger tape. The
airflow and cooling is better, there's a lot more freedom for where the drives
can be placed (thus allowing them to be within reach of ribbon cables instead
of just beyond), and I can even move the mounting location that critical eighth-inch
that permits the server to have memory installed on the motherboard as well.
Usually, I have the tape running vertically when mounting drives, but on some servers
where I just gave up on the whole "pc enclosure" idea and built rack-mount "modules"
with the drives put together like this drive array used for video
editing.
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By the way, in the rack's-eye-view of the motherboard above, it's "mounted" on a well-perforated
rack-shelf. It's not immediately obvious in the picture above, since the motherboard is on top of
them, I find that a perfectly good non-conductive "standoff" to use when mounting a mainboard
to a shelf or other flat surface without mount points specifically matching the board, is a
couple of tubular plastic clothes hangers of the type that run between one and two dollars for
ten at the local discount stores. Depending on the size of the board or shelf, either two or four
hangers work great.
Tubular plastic hangers are available in a variety of colors, thusly satisfying modern computer marketing and
design trends better than ordinary brass standoff screws.
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But speaking of drive arrays and cooling, those old bicycle innertubes aren't
just for furniture repair and restoration any more--a short piece of an innertube works
great for fitting a cooling fan into a drive mounting bracket.
It makes a decent seal and absorbs vibration. What more could you want?
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To be fair, not all server hardware designs are completely stupid.
By comparison, the Sun machines out here--mostly dual 300MHz Ultra 2s with 2GB
of memory--don't require any modifications to get them working and to keep them
humming away for years at a stretch.
However, they are what they are; you really can't go and add some
extra drive bays, put in an (affordable) hardware RAID controller, or otherwise keep
upgrading them so they stay at whatever more-or-less constant distance behind the
state-of-the-art that your finances will allow.
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Nowadays, taking a nibbling tool or a hacksaw to a computer case isn't as radical a notion as it used to be.
It's not so often that I start carving up the computer boards themselves--but sometimes the occasion most
definitely calls for it.
(look, Ma! No slot!) |
Here we have a standard-issue LSI Logic/AMI MegaRAID Elite 1500. You might know it under one of its
many other aliases--Dell calls it a "PowerEdge Expandable Raid Controller Perc 2/DC," ADIC calls it
something else when they sell it under their label, etc.
You'll notice that it doesn't have the slot near the bracket that would let you use it in a 3.3v 64-bit PCI slot...but there aren't any
traces there either. Hmmmmm.
If you take a gander at the LSI Logic/AMI MegaRAID Enterprise 1500, you'll notice that it has the
same PC board, but there is a slot there. Double hmmmmmm....
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Bear in mind that this is high-tech stuff we're working on here. If you want to follow along at home, be sure to
observe appropriate anti-static safety precautions, avoid using power tools in the bathtub, and remember
that both the MegaRAID Elite 1500 and the hacksaw are intended for external use only.
As long as you're careful, when you're done, you can look forward to having your own MegaRAID Elite 1500
that's truly a cut above the rest.
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(MegaRAID 1500 shown next to highly sophisticated computer upgrade tool) |
(new, improved MegaRAID!
Now with 50% more slots!) |
There, that was easy enough. It may not be quite as neat as the factory-installed slots, but it's good enough. Even
better is the fact that it works. I've been switching over a lot of the external network servers out here to systems
built on the older Serverworks ServerSet III-LE chipset, and these modified MegaRAIDs have been working fine in
their 3.3v 64-bit slots for a year now.
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Update 2004.08.30 - during recent testing, the modified Elite 1500s produced sporadic errors when
performing long, sustained writes to LVD drive arrays. This did not happen if the Elite 1500 was
replaced with the Enterprise version or if the channel was forced to operate in single-ended mode. If you're
using external enclosures like the Sun 711 (cute, reliable, and compact--I've got more than a dozen running here)
that only support single-ended operation, or you're operating the Elite 1500 in a 5 volt PCI slot, you should
be fine. I've only experienced occasional problems with modified Elite 1500 controllers in 3.3v slots operating
in LVD mode. (Got that? Whew!)
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I've grown fond of bolting a lot of the server room hardware onto relay racks;
access is convenient and airflow is good. Some rack-mount hardware has the
convenient option of letting you mount the rack "ears" near the center of gravity,
but many don't, and that can make the relay-racks a little back-heavy.
(Oh, if you're curious, the pile of mail at the base of the racks is a batch of
domain renewal notices from Verisign; at least now you know why their
registration fees are so much higher than the rest of the world's: just the
postage alone must run be costing them plenty.)
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But, hey, if you happen to have all these extra chains left over from the dungeon
scenes in a recent movie--and (this is important) some way of attaching them to the
ceiling (like the framing seen here), here's a way to give a little extra support
to that back-heavy rack-mount gear and keep your relay racks more stable at the same time.
We all know that 24-hour support is very important when servers are concerned, so this
is one way to add an extended support plan for your servers on the cheap.
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Speaking of relay racks, they work great for making instant high-tech sets in the
studio or on location. They come apart easily, set up fast, and you can cover 'em
with your choice of obsolete-but-impressive-looking computer hardware. I didn't end
up using them in the set down at the bottom of this page, largely because of the
height and openness of the set, but the behind me there's everything from an a
couple of Vaxen to a USR total control 9600 modem bank. (Why not use some of that
excess US Robotics/3com Total Control hardware to decorate your evil lab from which
spring your plots for world domination?)
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The news servers out here are all seated on or under a "desk" made from
a concrete shower base supported on a pair of brightly-painted steel
aquarium stands (don't ask me--I didn't pick the color scheme; I got
'em mixed in with a bunch of used reef tank stuff).
As usual, we can see that Nyx is leading the way in high-tech furniture
design. Because of weight and shipping cost reasons, most "computer furniture"
manufacturers have elected not to use the same "concrete and heavy steel tubing"
materials used here, but you'll notice that now all the "high-tech" office
furniture incorporates the "integral shower drain" feature so you can run cords
down to the equipment below and/or channel very large coffee spills through your
desk rather than off the sides.
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Some of the surplus server equipment I get in is, unfortunately, so proprietary and
obsolete that not even awesome powers of yogurt lids and hanger tape are capable
of upgrading it. But I try not to waste exotic hardware that can still be used for
some useful purpose. Here is one of the Netframe redundant processor systems
that I understand used to operate the infamous first state-of-the-art (or state-of-destruction)
baggage handling system for United Airlines at Denver International Airport.
While none of the Netframe machines I have are currently plugged and active, they
are still cool-looking enough to use for decorative pedestals.
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Sometimes you just have to accept that even the most advanced and state-of-the-art
computers, sooner or later, become too obsolete to use for present-day computing tasks.
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...at least until a suitable compiler and the new Linux kernel source becomes available
on paper tape.
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So what do you do with all the duct tape you have left over because you didn't use it on the servers?
Here's one use--in this case, a whole lot of it was used to build a custom clothing dummy so costumes could be
tailored to fit me without my actually being there. You can see how that could be a big timesaver.
But, just as a suggestion, if you decide to do this, be sure to wear long underwear or something similar *underneath* the
duct tape. Oh, and breathe in before wrapping your chest. It'll be more pleasant than trying to breathe in afterwards.
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