DIY ~20U server rack September 17, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Either way, we managed to make a nice server rack for under $150 (although, that is partly the fault of the stupid workers at home depot, who didn’t scan in three of the $15 one inch pieces, but, we’re not complaining!)
full instructions, with pictures! after the click:
So, to begin our task, we have the parts we need:
from left to right, top to bottom:
| item | cost per $ | total cost $ |
| wavebird wireless controller for game cube* | – | – |
| imperial purple paint for projector* | – | – |
| 1-1/4 inch 3 foot steel box tubes x4 | 15.87 | 15.87 |
| 1-1/4 inch 3 foot steel right angles x6 | 7.22 | 43.32 |
| 1-1/2inch x 1-1/2 inch 2 foot steel right angles x5 | 5.63 | 28.15 |
| 10 inch economy hacksaw (with 2 2packs of extra blades) | 4.96 | 9.92 |
| 1-1/4 inch casters 2pack x2(we got these, but they’re too small, so we’re getting bigger ones) | 2.28 | 4.56 |
| bag of flat washers & lock washers x40 each | 0.08 flat, 0.15, lock | 9.20 |
| box of 1/4-20 1 inch bolts with nuts | 5.47 | 5.47 |
| not pictured | – | – |
| box of 1/4-20 2inch blots with nuts | 5.47 | 5.47 |
| 1-3/8inch 3foot steel plates x2 | 5.12 | 10.24 |
| total paid | – | 132.20 |
| actual cost | – | 179.81 |
*not actually required for construction of rack
Now, onto the actual construction of it:
Step 1: Design
Ok, this step is easy, its a 19 inch, by 30 inch, by 36 inch box. The 1-1/4 inch box tubes are the vertical braces, and the right angle ones are the other braces
Step 2: Cut top and bottom braces
The 1-1/2inch angle pieces we bought were 24 inches long, and we needed them 19 inches, so we cut them.
Step 3: Construct the ends
So, now that we have our cross braces, we need to screw them into the 1-1/4 tubes. This is where we made a mistake at home depot. I said get the box of 1.5 inch bolts, but, apparently mike can’t read, and we got 1 inch ones instead. Its ok though, cause we figured out how to do it anyway, by putting the screwdriver into the hole, and tightening the nut on the outside
Now, to just test the weight with the computer case, just to make sure it’s strong enough, otherwise we have a major problem!
Good, it works! Now we have to make another one!
Step 4: Cut the back cross pieces:
The pieces were 36 inches long, and we needed them 30 inches, me and mike split up the cutting, i do two, he does two, unfortunately, we only have documented proof of me doing all the cutting, eh, who cares.
Step 5 a: Bolt the pieces together
Step 5 b: Test it’s strength
Just cause it can hold up mike doesn’t mean its super strong, mike is skinny, then again, i’m short, and we both weight about the same, eh.
Step 5 c: Play Geometry Wars
Step 6: Back brace
I thought that there should be a brace holding up the back of the server(s) even though mike swore by the bolts on the front. As an engineer, i thought better to be safe then sorry, so we put a 3 foot angle piece in on either side, at around 22 inches back, the length of mike’s case. Onto this we will be putting another 19 inch angle piece.
Step 7: Put diagonal braces in
We discovered that the box isn’t exactly what one would call “square” so we needed some diagonal braces, not hard, just another trip to home depot.
Step 8: Wheels!
did you really think we would have made this with no wheels? If you did, you’re a crazy person!
You can’t really see the wheels, but they’re there, and we forgot the screws for the wheels, cause they’re smaller then the bolts we got, so they are currently zip tied in place. That’s ok for now though, cause it’s not going many places.
Step 9 a: Put the computers in
Look at those pretty computers, one is a core 2 duo computer with sli and lots of other goodies i forgot about (cause its not mine). The other one is the Deadly NAS, complete with 2.0 TB of hard disk space for all our microwaving fun!
Step 9 b: Connect the computers
In connecting the computers up, we decided to mount the power surge on the side with some of the left over right angle pieces:
We also decided to use a piece of wood we found along time ago as a base to hold the UPS the mike has. It was alittle big, so we cut it, and it holds the 40lb battery well.
That wood is gonna be replaced by some sheet metal as soon as we go back to home depot to get it again, man, we need a car.
That’s it. Kinda simple really! We couldn’t believe how easy it was, less then $200, less then 2 hours of work, and absolutely no hot glue used at all (Mike was happy about that one!)
This server rack is about 32U.
We’ve decided that we will make custom racks to order if people want. Email: store@deadlycomputer.com for more info.
nice rig, though you might think about painting it since the cast iron is going to eventually start to rust.
It’s not cast iron, it’s galvanized or anodized (coated, regardless) steel “dexion”. It would look better painted after a coat of primer then 2-3 coats of a good satin black, or even hammer finish if they want to blow the $$ for the paint. Make sure the holes have no paint in them afterwards since this is part of your grounding system.
Old bed rails are great for DIY racks – free and you need only drill (or drill then tap for threads) holes in the front rails and where the lengths bolt together – could even weld it if you never wanted to tear it down.
I just built a wall mounted 6U for my switch, patch panel and cable management in the 19″ area with a shelf on top for the Linksys wireless router and SpeedStream DSL modem and patch antennas to guide my wifi only where I use it. Made totally of 3/4″ pine 1×10 board I had excess front stair treads. Painted it flat black, mounted to the wall and used coarse drywall screws to mount the rack items.
My tall server rack is in work – used to be a tray cart for a hospital. Steamed it at the car wash, let it dry a week and primed and painted the aluminum satin black then drilled and tapped the front rails for a standard rack pattern. About 7 ft tall, big wheels under it. Cost me $5 for the surplus cart without a front door and about $20 in paint at the local department store (just the generic grey primer and satin finish black spray – about $2 a can).
Great going guys! Love the pictures of the rack being assembled. I help people select the best server rack for their applications and found your site doing a server rack word search. If there is a rack you are not able to make, let me know.
These guys sell rack rails for fairly cheap. You could easily mount them inside a wood frame.
http://www.racksupplystore.com/rack-rails.html
This is entirely a worthwhile project to build, and a financially sound decision as well. To those of you saying you’ve found racks from Middle Atlantic, those are audio racks for A/V components and dont have the depth for mounting server rails in. For those of you who’ve found cheap soltions at Kendall Howard, the cheap ones are A/V cabinets or wall-mount units, and again don’t have the depth for rails. You just can’t buy a real server rack, with wheels, for under $500. (some sites have them available for $400 without doors, handles or wheels attached, and are happy to sell them as addons. I’ve trolled ebay too, shipping’s expensive and it’s hard to find a rack with the appropriate depth to take server rails. plenty of short stubby ones for cheap, and plenty of APC NetShelters but they’re expensive.
Kudos to Dan, starting with a good set of pre-drilled pre-cut rails is the best way to go. they aren’t that expensive and you know you’ve got the right threading and spacing on them for all standard equipment.
Frame them up however you want, as long as the holes are 19″ apart and the rail-to-rail (front to back depth) is 34″ – 36″ (EIA 310-D) and you’re good to go.
I’m building something similar myself, but already had a set of pre-drilled rails i scavenged off some older equipment, it makes things so much easier.
nice!
I’m still in a better place than anyone else so far – my desk has a hole the right size for a 19″ rack in it already, and when i checked it against one of my dmx dimmer units, the sides were a perfect fit!
so i just bolted it straight into that! thankyou muchly ikea! (i think the desk is discontinued now though).
I’ll still have to build one when i go to university next year thoug.h!
I think your idea is damn good! I personally don’t see how shipping it will work but you could try http://www.urbandispatch.com….. I must point out that custom building your own rack as you did is an amazing idea! I have my own Linux server at home and I have been thinking about building a rack for it… yes a whole rack for one server…. but I plan to get more (current server is a web and fileserver – http://www.urhostingpro.com, plan to just have a web server and a seperate file server for playing around with VMware).
That is OK I guess but when I saw RACK, I was hoping for something more flesh colored.
Hmm. Kinda stole your idea…..but doubled the dimensions…and built a (40ish) U rack out of angle iron and box tubes. I used angle iron to provide, ’shelving’ for the cases to rest on, and mounted plywood behind the cases for power supplies/other things to mount to. It came out fairly well. Ended up costing about 350 dollars. Oh, I found it cheaper to get the metal through McMasterCarr online than thru home depot. Anyway, thanks for posting your ‘walk through’ because it would have never occurred to me to try without it.
@Jeremy the idea was there to be modded, and made your own.
40(ish)U is pretty big. Im sure the metal is cheaper online, but how much did shipping cost?
glad it helped you a bit. if you have photos send them, I’d love to see them and post them
Shipping was about 30 bucks total. It might have been cheaper, but I forgot to get rectangular bar’s at first and had to order them separately. got 4 6′ box tubes for 22.41 each, 22 pieces of 3′ angle iron for 3.85 each, and 25 3′ rectangular bars for 3.09 each.
To be exact, 2 pieces of angle iron and 25 rectangular bars was 11 dollars to ship. the other 20 pieces of angle iron and 4 box tubes was 23 dollars to ship.
I took pictures of most of the construction process. Should I send them to steve@deadlycomputer.com or
tips@deadlycomputer.com?
Wow, those prices are much cheaper then what we paid, and $30 seems pretty cheap. You got a steal!
The one plus about getting them at Home Depot/Lowes is that when you forget something, its just a 5min drive to go pick it up.
either email address is fine.
I absolutely love the idea. Not sure how quick it will get off the ground, but I guarantee you others will want this…not because it’s something they can’t do, (of course they can), but because it’s already done for them. Humans are naturally lazy, and if they can get something pre-packaged that saves them time – many will be all over it. I’ll be watching. How are you going to control cooling, and have you had any power problems as of yet?
I’ve taken on this idea and expanded it with my DIY rackmount setup, built in speakers in the bottom (totally custom) and the rack is fully welded 1 1/4″ tube for the frame and 1″ angle iron for rails to put the cases in. A custom paint job and built in blue LED’s to boot. For now I only have pics up online, building a site soon.
Rack looks sweet! I’m picking out all the pieces for mine soon. How heavy is the rack?
@Shad -surprisingly, there has been little interest in people asking us to send them kits to make their own racks. Probably because of lack of advertisement on our part. As for cooling, and power issues, we haven’t had any. In fact cooling wise, for a while, a short while, we had an elaborate liquid cooling system set up. That didn’t last long for various reasons, none of which were Rack related, but rather school related. And as for power, no issues to report.
@Hack -We had a version 2 of our rack that was welded, I never got around to posting it because of a change in plans and other things we got rid of it. But please, send some pictures to me about it: steve@deadlycomputer.com I’ll gladly post them!
@Brooks -I’m sorry, I don’t remember how heavy the rack is. Not overly heavy, but not exactly light either. One person could lift it empty no problems, but other then that I can’t give you specifics.
I picked up a cheap rack from cables to go. It was some company called Great Lakes. The build quality is good, it was easy to assemble and cheap if you factor in the time needed to build you own. Not to mention it is powder coated so it looks a little better than a do it yourself. http://werackyourworld.com/products/racks/four-post/
I stumbled upon your plans to build your own rack cabinet. I saw some of the negative comments. This project was very nicely done! I liked your plans, your photos, and the parts list. You have the right spirit to dream and want the unusual which is exactly the kind of people that succeed.
We are told that the impact of an idea can be measured by the amount of resistance that the idea generates. Keep dreaming, keep working. It takes no talent to criticize. It takes great imagination to see something in your mind and then make it a reality. I am sincere.
I am an engineer for a very major electronics company. Your project reminded me of myself many years ago. Thanks.
Great idea, I will be making this, all thanks to you!! :)
you can also do what I did, build a box out of 3/4 plywood, and put fans in the back, with a hinged door. but 2 sets of middle atlantic rack rail, and screw to the inside, home depot for some plexi-glass, dark tint, black paint, door hardware, and some rollers for the bottom. cost me about:
$80.00 plus misc stuff I had laying around so lets say $100.00 but I do like your idea. very cool. 5 stars
Does anyone know if you build your own rack, do you have to put any type of ground on it to prevent static electricity from frying your equipment? I’m new to the i.t. industry and still have a lot to learn. Thanks
I am attempting to create a server rack per your instructions. I will be working on it this weekend. I picked up the supplies at lowes which was pretty expensive, around 200…. I may buy some angle pieces to create some kind of rest for each server as others have said for the weight distribution. I will be using the server rack at my house. I will let you know how it goes.
Today I made this build. It was pretty good i didnt make a few modifications but overall its a great rack mount.
I’m hoping the Geometry Wars step is optional? :P
Anyway, nice build. Stumbled. :)
optional? i guess it’s not required for the building of the rack, but it is by no means optional, GW is an excellent stress reliever, and overall awesome game
Love your DIY rack, simple, effective and most importantly dirt cheap. The components you used can be bought very cheaply here.
Im planning on making the casing myself since those are kinda expensive to buy if you consider the fact that im using some old unwanted computer to do the job.
And yes, geometry wars should be optional but not halo3 :)
Nice work and good luck on future projects!
Clement
I have three refurbished dell servers and I need to build a rack for these. Noticed you built one from scratch from Home Depot Material. Can you give an idea as to the type of rails I should use to hold the three servers or more. The more you were sitting on seems strong enough to hold three servers assuming they are about 30lbs each (1 think).
I have a server cabinet that currently holds three Compaq proliant (antiques) servers and two UPS. I could use this but it requires a wider bracket and am not sure if the cabinet will hold another three servers.
appreciate it
James
The rails we used were regular 1″ right angle steel that we bolted onto the frame at the height we wanted. Everything except the computers themselves were bought at Home Deopt/Lowes.
Good luck in your project
Great job guys! I was searching the web to see if I could DIY a server rack before I went and built myself a server for it. The prices I’ve seen companies sell them for (500+ for just an 8U) are ridiculous. I may not copy your plans (I like to design and create, thank you 15 years of LEGOs growing up) but you’ve definitely shaken my doubt of building a rack for cheap!
Maybe you should consider spec-ing up some varying sizes and selling them! It looks like it only took a few hours to make. charge 100 bucks (labor) plus parts and you’ve still got the cheapest racks on the market!
I had a quick question. How do the holes on the angle iron line up compared to actual Rack Rails?
Cool project!
if i remember correctly, the holes on the 4U case lined up perfectly, but then ones on the 1U case not so much.
I think it had something to do with the slots. The 4U case was good because we were able to start it on a slot, and move it alittle up or down to line it up right.
Not possible on a 1U.
You guys should check out this site: http://www.mce.com
They offer a lot of racks and a ton of other refurbished computer products. Cool rack though!
DAMN! Sweet Rack.
I bought my rack from http://www.2postrack.com. I wish I would have seen this article. Oh well. The rack I bought is taller and it came black which saves me from painting it. But I love DIY and yours is sweet!
Great article.
Guys!
This is great! Dexion has a million and one uses – would love to get 32 1u PC’s at my place! :)
Cheers
Brad
Oops! Too much red wine.
Hell, 20u is just as good as 32u.
Just need bigger disks! and cpu and memory!
LOL
Cheers
Brad