Topic: Server Equipment

How I built a 48GB VRAM, 256GB RAM, 36 core / 72 thread, 24TB machine for about $1200.

A final overview of the finished project building a home data center from 2nd hand enterprise equipment.

After a change of which server was using which memory sticks in my home data center project, one of the Dell R710 would continuously fail to boot any operating system typically exiting with kernel panic issues.

All servers within this project have 4 ethernet ports. To increase throughput in communication between each, I had to bond each of these devices to allow all devices on each server to be used, in effect quadrupling the throughput between each server.

A number of ports didn't work on the Force10 switch when initially using it as a standard switch. This was likely due to having special settings based on the previous installation while also having credentials for access via the console port. This post describes getting access to the switch, wiping the settings and setting it up for the given project.

After the introduction of the X400 to my home data center project, the next step was getting the server to manage it's cooling much more efficiently so that I could run the server in a household setting.

The next step in building a home data center: adding a server to handle storage. For this purpose I picked up a 36 HDD bay, 4 unit rack-mount Isilon / EMC X400 chassis with a Supermicro X8 series motherboard. Fun ensues getting this part of the project working!!

After completing my previous project of building a Kubernetes cluster using old computers, I decided to take the next logical step and use real data center hardware to build a Kubernetes cluster at home within a budget of $3000. This is the first of a series of posts describing the build.