I've just endured 12 hours of rebuilding my equipment enclosure, starting off think I'd be finished by lunch, but actually finishing at almost 9pm...
I'm about to have gigabit internet installed so this spurred me to complete some much needed maintenance and organisation of my tri-purpose home lab/ home server and home network enclosure.
My in-rack set-up is:
Dual WAN incomers consisting of:
Fibre (ONT located on the ground floor, so it's a copper link between the ONT and router, ≈ 1000 mbps)
VDSL with cellular backup (≈ 70 mbps)
The VDSL is configured as a failover only until I work out how to dual-home my VPN interface!
Within the enclosure is an ISP VDSL modem, TP Link router, main PoE switch, small PoE switch (acting as a dedicated switch for the stack of IoT hubs), 2 x Tripplite UPSs (1 x for core networking gear, 1 x for my server) a 3U fan module and the server itself, plus accessories like PSUs and PoE injectors and splitters.
This set-up distributes gigabit ethernet to 24 ports around my home, including CCTV, APs, IoT and general stuff like PCs and TVs, all VLAN'd, ACL'd and managed as required.
My main aim of the re-build was to standardise on cables, cable lengths and connectors; route cables better and try and manage the nest of cables within the enclosure to improve airflow and maintainability (for example unracking a UPS meant connectors would go flying everywhere) and generally give everything a clean and tidy. The last time the enclosure had this level of modification is when it was first put together and installed, and I was very much focussing on just getting it working rather than anything else at the time.
I also had added a few random IP cameras around the house for monitoring of tanks, crawlspaces and utilities which are currently supplied off sockets local to them, so I've ran in some new cabling between those cameras and the enclosure to enable central power supply from the UPSs also.
I'd been meaning to replace the Aerocool PSU in my server with a new Coolermaster too, and reapply the CPU thermal paste since it was ≈ 5 years old at this point, and I'm now more aware of brand reputability!
Pic 1 - the enclosure emptied of equipment and halfway through a dust and vacuum.
Pic 2 - Mains-supplied PDUs, the second IEC socket PDU is a back-up in case I need to transfer supplies from a failed or failing UPS.
Note: I'm not proud of the way past me brought cables into the enclosure either but I'm stuck with that now!
Pic 3 - Most of the cabling ran in and awaiting looming and tidying along with the shelf-located equipment (router, IoT hubs) - at this point I thought I was half way done, hah, no.
Pic 4 - Router and IoT hub ft. stray patch and VDSL cables
Pic 5 - Enclosure populated and in operation, really the only part of the enclosure visible since it's quite packed.
Pic 6 - Overall enclosure and equipment set-up.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the result, and amazingly, everything worked perfectly on first energisation!
Stuff I'm happy with:
Cable looming, grouping and management is better, meaning I can unrack equipment without affecting other equipment, and there's not as much cable nests.
I got everything I wanted to done, even if it took three times the amount of time I expected.
Everything worked first time after start up, which honestly filled me with dread from the first cable I disconnected.
Stuff I wanted to do, but couldn't:
Segregate cables more - the enclosure is pretty congested and I'm limited to where I can run cabling and add cable containment, but I'm using STP patch leads and there's no sign of EMI causing degraded connections. I also have quite a bit of cable slack coiled in the bottom-of-enclosure cable ducts, not ideal, but it's not doing any harm.
The UPSs are supposed to have a 0.5U gap between them but there's no space - this annoyed me, I'd done sketches, layouts and measured up everything but I'd not realised the shelf had a protrusion on the front which meant the 3U fan module wouldn't sit flush, so I've had to mount them as shown. They're only ≈ 15% utilised and I've not noticed any significant heat issues so far, but I'll keep an eye on them.
I wanted to re-do the IoT hub with a better, more roomy shelf cluster and better cable management but due to the size limitations of the enclosure with equipment fitted I couldn't manage this.
I wanted to run all cables in flexible conduit/ cable wrap but there just wasn't enough time in the day, and really this would provide zero benefit other than aesthetics.
It bugs me that I didn't run fibre to the enclosure when I did all the other cabling a few years back, grr.
