Custom Server Rack

[Mark Leon]

Hello everyone. This is my first time. I have this project and I’m trying to build the infrastructure, My wife and I built a custom handicapped home rambler unfinished basement. We had basic wiring ran at time of build, we have a elevator roughed in if needed in the future. We have coming into the home

 

two coax feeds 

two telephone feeds, one of the feeds has a grey wire

 

we have home runs

 

three bedrooms have mounted TVs and fed down to one coax and one cat5e modular jack

 

kitchen has a desk built in that has 1 phone modular jack one cat5e modular jack

 

everything meets in the basement they didn’t install any panels it’s just dropped in. 

 

So so that’s what Ihave. We will some day have a home theatre room with projector in the basement. 

 

Im building up an apple eco system we have iPhone iPads iMac MacBooks kids have iPod touches, Apple TV 4K just a few days ago got a HomePod 

 

Now that apple changed there HomeKit standards to allow firmware update versus Special hardware. 

 

I want to feed cables for security cameras I’m thinking POE?

 

I want to build a server rack (I built an antec pc about 5 years ago the big tower with blue LED lights, I want to do stuff like that with the server rack. I can’t find any resources for this but I see videos of people showing it, 

 

I would like to run all components to either server rack or closet so at the tv install IR repeater. 

 

How do you run hdmi from behind tv to server rack? Cable length max? Where to buy them?

 

right now I have a WD My Cloud Drive just a 3TB no raid however since we are all apple in this home we backup automatically our phones and iPads and iPods to iCloud plus our phones backup to iCloud and pictures on the phones backup to the mycloud and use iCloud Drive for everything. (In 2014 I was not backing up and my pc hard drive crashes it cost over $500 to have a company get all the pictures)

 

how do do I find a rack mounted backup system for security cameras, and setup a nas raid system? I saw one where it hold x amount of drives and he can just add new drives as he goes. 

 

Where can I find cooling system and even a temp monitor. 

 

A few few years ago I had over 100 movies  I tried a lot of clients from raspberry pi xbmc, I tried Plex, DLNA, on the server side I used a hand full it always lagged. 

 

I would like like to look at this option again. 

 

Is cat6 or 7 worth running?

 

at the end of the day I want all home automation in apple HomeKit. 

 

Thank you

 

 

 

[Scheer]

If you literally mean a 19" wide server rack, everything is more expensive just for the sake of being able to cram as much hardware as possible into as little space as possible. If you are only going to have a few servers I wouldn't bother getting a rack.

 

Definitely go POE on your cameras, it simplifies everything. You can do a single ethernet cable into the attic, and have a 4 or 8 port POE switch up there to branch over to all the cameras.

If you are really stuck on the rack for a NAS, some options from Synology:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1384859-REG/synology_rs818rp_4_bay_nas_rackstation.html?ap=y&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9NbdBRCwARIsAPLsnFakvlqa-oLIlaN7hmbx7_wGDfIWcmOsLn5Fc35g5gWK21_wIf6XhZgaAvjFEALw_wcB&smp=y

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1394636-REG/synology_rs3618xs_12_bay_nas_rackstation.html?ap=y&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9NbdBRCwARIsAPLsnFbF_3632PiGLcPF8b1EqhIoVm_vduMgxALPzAYe7bIksVM8XjJGdIgaAiHiEALw_wcB&smp=y

 

There are special HDMI cables that can do ~100' (redmere), or you can buy adapters that use a pair of Ethernet cables with the adapters on each end to go back to HDMI and they are rated for 300'. You need the more expensive active ones (will need powered) to do 4K, the simple $10 ones will do 1080p max and I believe have issues even at that.

 

Check out the Logitech Harmony Hub for TV control, its awesome. I'd also strap a HTPC (NUC/Chromebox/AppleTV) to the back of the TV or in a nearby cabinet rather than running HDMI all the way downstairs.

 

Synology has a security camera "app", but after the two free cameras it is $50 per camera IIRC. My preferred security software is Blue Iris, but I've also heard a lot of good things about Milestone. If you go BI or Milestone, either buy a rackmount server, or build your own out of normal PC components into a rackmount chassis.

 

As long as you have fairly modern hardware you shouldn't need any fancy cooling. I have 1000 watts draw worth of PCs and network gear under my stairs and don't even leave the door open, have yet to run into a heat issue. There are dozens of programs out there you can set to alert you if one hits a temperature threshold, or you can buy hardware controllers that will alarm, or even kick on fans/open vents if needed.

 

From my experience, if Plex is lagging you either have an under powered server or client, or your network cannot support it. The plex clients on smart TVs is really laggy, but using a NUC with Plex embedded works awesome. The one downside at the moment is embedded 2.x isn't on the stable release yet, and the beta builds keep crashing for me when I enable subtitles for some reason... works fine after a reboot at least.

 

If you are running new wiring, I always suggest to go with the latest and greatest as its going to suck tearing into walls 10 years from now because you wanted to cheap out. Honestly, quality Cat6a isn't much more than quality Cat5e anyways. NEVER buy the $60/1000' rolls of Cat5e you'll see at hardware stores if you are running in the walls, its not worth the risk IMO. If its easily replaceable go with whatever you have on hand, worst case scenario you spend 5-10 minutes replacing it. As far as US based standards are concerned, Cat7 isn't even a real thing. Cat6a is what is rated for 10gbe at full length, however Cat6 is also good for ~100 feet at 10gbe which is rarely exceeded in a house.