Our baby server farm
Pix of the new dedicated computer that the wife and I bought to serve BitTorrent stuff of our art and friends’ art, 24/7/365.
The ‘pooter was getting HOT, like the components inside burned our fingers to touch them, so we opened up the case and bought a fan (from Bed, Bath and Beyond…I’m becoming such a yuppie!) to keep the li’l torrents cool and happy. Cobbled the cover out of a storage bin (also from Bed, Bath and Beyond). Now the inside of the computer, and all the components, are always room temp or below. Will blow any dust out with canned air every few days, but shouldn’t be an issue, hard drive is only moving part, and it’s well sealed.
We’re keeping the door on this spare bedroom (now known as “the Torrentarium”) closed for now, but are gonna go get chicken wire or a screen and jerry-rig it over the front of the computer stand to keep the kitties out so we can keep the door open and all the pets can lounge in there. They like it.
This is the first tiny acorn of our baby server farm. It will one day turn into a mighty 40-acre T4 industrial complex out in the country. We’ll have curvy women in slips fanning the computer racks with palm fronds, and more gals in camo slips on the roof with sniper rifles.
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P.S.
OH…Julie asked me:
what is a baby server farm?
I wrote:
Server farm is computer server room. Racks of dedicated servers for web and media hosting. Usually in a climate-controlled air-conditioned room.
This is our LITTLE server farm. A baby one. A starter server farm.
(It’s NOT a farm for serving babies! Though we look at our media and little torrents as “our babies.”)
Here’s pix of server farms we like:
(above) our next step up.
(above) Our next step after that. (Not pictured- cats asleep on top and around it.)
(above) Our fourth server farm.
(above) After that - a server farm in a former church.
(above) Then we buy Google’s server farm (above, a tiny tiny few of Google’s servers.)
(above) Going too far…the IRS’ chrome-plated servers.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Awwww.. all those cute baby torrents now have their own little terrarium to live and grow in.
Fly little torrents. Fly!!
March 29th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
That setup is a piece of art in itself.
March 29th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Thanks, sir.
Yeah, we had fun with it. My idea, wife figured out how to mount the fan (with packing tape.)
The hole on the front left is so I can add data with my 4-gig USB thumb drive without removing the cover (though it also helps with air flow.)
Gotta love a cool, comfy, happy pooter!
We got the kitty stickers at the grocery store, impulse item. They’re all over all of our gear now.
MEW!
MWD
March 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Oh yeah, and the moving blankets on the wall? We covered most walls in the house with them, to make podcasting on the H2 non-echoy. I live in a near-anechoic chamber. Love it, but it makes going out in the world seem that much more spiney.
March 30th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Nice set up. However, you may want to consider taping a washable air conditioner filter over the front of the fan to help keep dust and smoke from getting inside the computer box. Just a thought, not sure how much of a problem that is anyway.
Did you ever think that some day you would be living in padded rooms, and not be locked up? LOL
March 30th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
>Did you ever think that some day you would be living in padded rooms, and not be locked up?
No. And I love that!
March 30th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
“Baby Server Farm”, isn’t that a Spinal Tap song?
Technology is a beautiful thing. 20 years ago, that setup would have been both prohibitively expensive, and probably illegal.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
well, I remember they couldn’t export Pentium 3 computers to china, because they were considered “supercomputers” and thus considered munitions.
I do know that a 10 Mbps fiber optic line, that I’m paying 100 bucks a month for, would have cost 10,000 a month 10 years ago. And my first computer had a one-meg hard drive, had 64 k of RAM, and cost $3000. This new one cost 425, with the extra memory. It has two gigs (2 million k) of RAM (which would have cost 4000 dollars ten years ago, in fact, the first memory stick I bought, 16 megs for 80 dollars, I bought it from a place where they had an armed guard, kept the memory in a safe, and sold nothing but memory. They got robbed a few times, and this was in the financial district of San Fran, at 225 Bush, in the Chevron building) and has an 80 gig (80,000 meg) hard drive.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:09 am
Something to consider, or not:
Rather than blowing cool air onto the unit, you want to draw the hot air away from the unit. Maybe reverse the fan? Air FLOW is the important thing.
Also, dust makes an excellent thermal insulator, and in some cases can be electroconductive. That makes for a Very Bad Situation. Canned air is pricey; filtration is cheap and also adds nerd cred.
OR, ignore all this and just spash some salt water into it every once in a while. See if I care.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 am
is serving babies not a modest proposal? i like the nigrig setup.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 am
Jonathan Swift would LOVE this li’l server.
MWD