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Hey folks,
I'll start with a little backstory. Last year the hum of servers rattling 24/7 in my bedroom became too much. That, and the extreme heat - my room was averaging 26c when the outside ambient was in the minus numbers.
The gory details, for those interested are: Dual core AMD 3800 with 5 x hdd, dual core xeon with 4 x SCSI drives, P4 with 7x hdd drives, an imac, an emac, a G4 Sawtooth for those who remember them, a P4 workstation, a duo 6600, and later on a quad 6600 with three hdds, a big tagan psu and an 8800GTS. There was a WYSE thin client aswell but that was the last of the heat and noise issues.. anyway, i'm getting sidetracked.
I axed the emac, the duo left for another room, the P4 workhorse and the quad core stayed in my room. As did the wyse and imac.
While redecorating, I found out that there's enough room under my floor to house the remaining servers. So for the last 6 months, i've had 5 servers self-ventilating and very quietly humming under my floor. On the up side, my bedroom nolonger sounds like a turbine room. On the down side, i've had to make 4 trips under there so far.
Anyway! .. I'm investigating (cheap) ways to both hard reset(via the motherboards pwr + rst pins) and control the mains power. Has anyone here had any experience with this in the home, on a budget?
The first and most problematic to implement on a practical level is the soft reset. Dead simple in theory, hard in practice(For me, anyway.) Pretty much all commercial solutions i found are aimed at the datacenter/enterprise market, and so overcomplicate - and overprice things dramatically. I don't need OOB access, I don't need dial in - I just need something to pass a current between the two wires when I want it to. Preferrably wirelessly.
Simply running a cable up from each motherboard to a control box above ground is the obvious solution, but a little fugly. I could easily build a box conisting of six Miniature Toggle Switches, which could look very cool - but I don't know how far I can run the wires from the motherboard before resistance is an issue(I'm far from an electronics specialist..).
I did start imagining a product - something that would sit inside a spare pci bay, and wirelessly recieve a signal from a remote and just bridge the two wires- nothing fancy, security isn't an issue - just well.. a soft switch, I guess. Low and behold, I found it:
http://www.dansdata.com/jremote.htm
Made in 2001 by some small, although still existent Thai company. It fits what must be an absolutly miniscule niche that i'm currently in. I've got in touch with them about ordering some, just to play with - but its so basic, i'm assuming that if I hit reset on one remote it will reset all recievers within range. Surely someone, somewhere, took this idea and did something with it?
My second problem thankfully is simpler. The machines are all behind a decent surge protector anyway, so I'm planning on sticking a simple remote controlled power switch between the surge strip and the plug incase of lightning or.. er.. sharks.-- unless anyone has some words of warning against.
.. and so, hopefully, meaning the only trips i'll be making under the floor is to add/remove/swap drives. Which, thankfully, is quite infrequently.
Has anyone seen, or had experienece with a similar scenario? If so - any words of advice? Its possible this question is more suited to a homebrew electronics forum, but I can't believe its a problem thats never been encountered or conquered by other computer enthusiasts.
Many thanks,
v0x
I'll start with a little backstory. Last year the hum of servers rattling 24/7 in my bedroom became too much. That, and the extreme heat - my room was averaging 26c when the outside ambient was in the minus numbers.
The gory details, for those interested are: Dual core AMD 3800 with 5 x hdd, dual core xeon with 4 x SCSI drives, P4 with 7x hdd drives, an imac, an emac, a G4 Sawtooth for those who remember them, a P4 workstation, a duo 6600, and later on a quad 6600 with three hdds, a big tagan psu and an 8800GTS. There was a WYSE thin client aswell but that was the last of the heat and noise issues.. anyway, i'm getting sidetracked.
I axed the emac, the duo left for another room, the P4 workhorse and the quad core stayed in my room. As did the wyse and imac.
While redecorating, I found out that there's enough room under my floor to house the remaining servers. So for the last 6 months, i've had 5 servers self-ventilating and very quietly humming under my floor. On the up side, my bedroom nolonger sounds like a turbine room. On the down side, i've had to make 4 trips under there so far.
Anyway! .. I'm investigating (cheap) ways to both hard reset(via the motherboards pwr + rst pins) and control the mains power. Has anyone here had any experience with this in the home, on a budget?
The first and most problematic to implement on a practical level is the soft reset. Dead simple in theory, hard in practice(For me, anyway.) Pretty much all commercial solutions i found are aimed at the datacenter/enterprise market, and so overcomplicate - and overprice things dramatically. I don't need OOB access, I don't need dial in - I just need something to pass a current between the two wires when I want it to. Preferrably wirelessly.
Simply running a cable up from each motherboard to a control box above ground is the obvious solution, but a little fugly. I could easily build a box conisting of six Miniature Toggle Switches, which could look very cool - but I don't know how far I can run the wires from the motherboard before resistance is an issue(I'm far from an electronics specialist..).
I did start imagining a product - something that would sit inside a spare pci bay, and wirelessly recieve a signal from a remote and just bridge the two wires- nothing fancy, security isn't an issue - just well.. a soft switch, I guess. Low and behold, I found it:
http://www.dansdata.com/jremote.htm
Made in 2001 by some small, although still existent Thai company. It fits what must be an absolutly miniscule niche that i'm currently in. I've got in touch with them about ordering some, just to play with - but its so basic, i'm assuming that if I hit reset on one remote it will reset all recievers within range. Surely someone, somewhere, took this idea and did something with it?
My second problem thankfully is simpler. The machines are all behind a decent surge protector anyway, so I'm planning on sticking a simple remote controlled power switch between the surge strip and the plug incase of lightning or.. er.. sharks.-- unless anyone has some words of warning against.
.. and so, hopefully, meaning the only trips i'll be making under the floor is to add/remove/swap drives. Which, thankfully, is quite infrequently.
Has anyone seen, or had experienece with a similar scenario? If so - any words of advice? Its possible this question is more suited to a homebrew electronics forum, but I can't believe its a problem thats never been encountered or conquered by other computer enthusiasts.
Many thanks,
v0x