So, my wishlist has changed. I’d always passed off rackmount equipment for being too expensive compared to the equivelent tower cases etc. Seems it’s not as costly as I had imagined.

It will cost me approximately $3000 USD to acheive a setup similar to the one seen left. Talked to Kelly about it, and she supports it. (I think mostly because it is so clean and tidy!)

This is where it gets geeky:

A 4U case to house a new Windows based quadcore PC. Several gig of RAM and a 400GB hard disk, primarily will be used for audio and video editing, as well as gaming.

A 2U case to house most of the current PC (Athlon 3200+) with upgraded RAM and new hard disks. This will run Linux and function as a webserver, IRC server, and in-house file/print server.

A 1U case to house a new VIA-based firewall. Running an 80GB hard disk to store the cache for a transparent proxy, log files, and other more dynamic information. Primary operating system information will be on a read-only compact flash card.

2U will be taken with a rackmount UPS (probably APC, whatever is worthwhile but cheap at the time).

A 1U network switch, 10/100/1000Mbps, probably 16port (don’t need that many, but it’s as small as I can find rackmounted). Also a 1U patchpanel for the network, 24 port.

That accounts for 11U of rack-mounted storage. I would probably get a 16U case, to allow for future additions – possibly seperating the server into the two internal and external functions for security, or implementing a PABX (using asterisk) for internal house phones and such.

The $3000 budget also allows for 3 identical 20″ Widescreen 2ms LCD screens, 2 of which would attach to the Windows PC, the third would be KVM’d to the firewall and server (because I know I’ll need a monitor and keyboard for them at some point, and dragging things around isn’t ideal or tidy), as well as being available to plug into my laptop(s), or when repairing computers for friends etc.

This will leave me with a P4 3GHz server (still missing parts), a Celeron 2.4GHz desktop PC, a P3 866 smallform PC, and an empty ATX case. It’ll also leave me with 4 external drives (after purchasing 2 external cases for the drives presently in the 866 and the Athlon) – 2x 320GB and 2x 160GB – more than enough for good mobile storage.

I’ll likely upgrade the CPU in the celeron to the highest P4 it will take, add some RAM and give it use as a media PC, patched to the server for storage. I’d also like to rebuild in the then-empty ATX case a PC intended for mobile use, but a little gruntier than most laptops. Whether used for on-site video editing, or for media projection etc – this is not accounted for in the upgrades.

The $3000 covers:

1. 1U, 2U and 4U cases for the PC, Server and Firewall/Router/Gateway
2. New motherboards and CPU’s for PC and Firewall/Router/Gateway
3. Hard disks for PC, Server, Firewall/Router/Gateway
4. Memory for PC, Server, Firewall/Router/Gateway
5. Compact Flash card and IDE2CF converter
6. Graphics card for PC
7. TV card for PC (to move to media center)
8. Rack-mounted UPS
9. Gigabit switch and patch panel
10. Rack-mounting rails for cases
11. Power supplies for un-PSU’d cases
12. LCD Monitors
13. 16U Rack-mount cabinet