Building a Home Data Center

[GoNode5]

Just wanted to share a project that I have been working on for a bit. First off I'm 24 never been committed to college fully but graduated high school #280 in my class out of #320. I spend most of my time on my computer playing video games and running a small computer repair business with my brother remotely and locally. For the past 2 years I've been saving every dime I could to try and pay for college courses here and there whenever I can. I managed to save up $15,000 and decided to invest in this project below. 

 

So I have plans on starting a small at home data center with like 10 servers. Right now I ordered a 15RU cabinet off ebay for $180.00. I have 10 Intel Xeon E3-1230 1U with 2x1TB SSD/SATA in all of them custom built with hardware raid pretty much top of the line servers. I have a pretty decent Comcast connected that will be going to the cabinet 100Mbps usually I can get a bit more like 120Mbps or so. I pay $60 a month for the internet and if my math is correct and all of the servers use about 1.3A each ill be paying about $1.5 per day for power so about $50 per month. I have a managed 1Gbps switch found it on ebay for $200 and a Cisco firewall for about $600. Still on the hunt for a new router but might be keeping the one I have since its pretty suitable.

 

My only problem is I've been doing some research on exactly how to route IP subnets to my router/switch and have not found a solution to it yet. If anyone has anything like this at home and knows how please hit me up. 

 

My total cost right now just to start this project up is: 

 

15RU Cabinet off ebay from jjobin $180.00 this is including shipping

10 Intel Xeon E3-1230 Barebones from Mr Rackables on ebay for $299 ea ran me $2,990

1TB Samsung SSD drives got a deal on them from a buddy for $220 each I bought 20 of them $4,400

Monthly internet $60 Monthly Reliant Power bill is usually $170 a month including my regular house usage. 

My managed switch $290 and a firewall $600

Still looking for a router which might run about $500 if I don't choose to use my current one from comcast. 

Also bought some rails and network cables spend about $300 on all of that and had to buy a AC unit went to the pawn shop and got a good one for $60.00. 

 

So I spent about $9,000 or so on this new project. Hopefully when I have everything setup and ready to go in a month or so I can bring some great gaming VPS's for runescape to osbot. I'm still really working on getting some network blends and stuff like that maybe verizon would be good. Everything is pretty much still in the making, I might sell some private colocation for people locally hopefully this is the start to a good thing. 

 

Just wanted to share a bit of what I have going on in my life right now. My goal one day is to open my own data center I'm always looking for talented individuals to work with just motivated people who love the IT field and love being innovative. Well ill post more updates / pictures once I have more setup and running. 

 

Thanks for reading hopefully this post encourages some folks to shoot for the stars. 

Edited May 24, 2016 by Omnificent

[bgr12]

Good luck. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

[Key OsRs]

Nice one man. Gl.

[Timekeeper]

Pics of anything? Purchase orders, room its going to be set up in? Or anything.

 

Sounds stupid cheap for electricty, my single computer raised my electricity bill 80  a month and it runs prob 14 hours a day, when it mined bitcoin it raised my bill around 200 a month

Edited May 24, 2016 by Timekeeper

[Uhtred]

Sounds like a great project!

[Trump]

Pics of anything? Purchase orders, room its going to be set up in? Or anything.

 

Sounds stupid cheap for electricty, my single computer raised my electricity bill 80  a month and it runs prob 14 hours a day, when it mined bitcoin it raised my bill around 200 a month

thats actually really hard to believe, what country do you live in?

[GoNode5]

Pics of anything? Purchase orders, room its going to be set up in? Or anything.

 

Sounds stupid cheap for electricty, my single computer raised my electricity bill 80  a month and it runs prob 14 hours a day, when it mined bitcoin it raised my bill around 200 a month

 

Ill have some pictures soon. I need to put the cabinet together. Most of the things I bought for the project are purchased off ebay. If your looking for servers and hard drives you can find them really cheap on ebay the ssd drives are just expensive sas and sata are cheap though. 

 

Going to have my main network setup hopefully by this Friday no later than Monday if everything I have in transit makes it to the house on time. I'm going to be making some youtube videos of the step by step process of everything I'm doing so if anyone wants to take the same path they won't have to do all the research I'm stuck doing.  

 

Once I have all the units running I'm going to be using a lot of power + the AC windows unit I purchased, not going to be in a windows but that will be more power. Although reliant told me I should still be under the $200 price range for electricity. I won't be running all of the units when everything first starts up probably just the VMware server a web hosting server and probably 2 dedicated servers for gaming and of course the switches, routers and firewalls. Ill gradually grown into the rest of the servers hopefully everything stays within a good monthly balance. 

 

Also I stay in Texas the San Antionio area. 

Edited May 24, 2016 by Omnificent

[The Hero of Time]

you might want to use a good router (they are very expensive) for a datacenter in stead of a standard customer one...

 

also you're lucky you started doing this now, back in the day vps wasn't popular and you'd have to rent servers/serverplacement room, vps make more money(if you get sales) 

also if you decide to do this, i'd recommend creating a company, even if its just your home. here in the netherlands it has a lot of benefits, including not paying taxes for buying things used for your company(saves a shit ton of money), and other reasons, idk about murica tho

Edited May 24, 2016 by The Hero of Time

[GaetanoH]

Goodluck man, all the best luck in your business!

[GoNode5]

you might want to use a good router (they are very expensive) for a datacenter in stead of a standard customer one...

 

also you're lucky you started doing this now, back in the day vps wasn't popular and you'd have to rent servers/serverplacement room, vps make more money(if you get sales) 

also if you decide to do this, i'd recommend creating a company, even if its just your home. here in the netherlands it has a lot of benefits, including not paying taxes for buying things used for your company(saves a shit ton of money), and other reasons, idk about murica tho

 

Ill get up to that later on down the road I think it cost like $400 or something to start a business here in Texas I was looking at LegalZoom they have many fees though. I spoke to my personal banker the other day they have some really good benefits with business banking. 

Edited May 24, 2016 by Omnificent

[GoNode5]

Quick update first item is here just need to get it all setup on my off day which is this Wednesday. 

 

I brought two of these one for my dedicated servers and one for colocation. Still in the process of actually figuring out how to use ARIN IPs on my comcast router but its coming along although I might need to hire a friend to help me with that. I'm thinking of doing 1 and 2U private colocation once I get the internet on the cages up and running might order a 42U cabinet instead of more 15U's depending on the client base. 

 

Will update more images once I have it up. 

 

Edited July 16, 2016 by Omnificent

[Jesus]

 

looks dank my dude

[ez11]

good luck dude

[Sooyoung]

Sounds like a lot of fun

[Tyelr]

Good luck man   keep us posted