I'm rebuilding my home network with a proper rack and a dedicated UPS, instead of running
Raspberry Pis scattered all over my office.
Well, here's my 3D Printed rack mount solution for the Pis, holding some of them already. There are links to
all the parts and gear I'm using in this video in the description below.
Now, before I put together this 3D printed rack, I considered buying this 1U rack mount
plate for $40 on Amazon. It looks nice, but it only holds 4 Pis, and besides, why would
I spend money on this if I have a 3D Printer? I can build anything, right?!
Ignoring the fact that it takes over 20 hours to print and half a spool of filament, I was
happy to find this cool 1U Pi rackmount enclosure by russross on Thingiverse.
He even posted videos about how to make it, and he has this 1U version for 6 Pis, and a
2U version for 12 Pis. The coolest part was these little sliding trays that allow hot-swap without
having to remove the whole rack enclosure, like you'd have to do with the premade one
I saw on Amazon. From his video it looked really nice and simple...but as I've learned
with all my 3D printing, what at first seems easy could take days with many failed prints.
So I started off by printing one rack frame with the default settings. Cura didn't build
any supports, and that didn't turn out so well. Apparently it's a little tougher to
build 0.2-millimeter bridges over a 10 centimeter gap than I thought.
So I tried turning the print over on another side, and I stopped that print when I realized
it was going to try to bridge the huge gap again.
So I added supports everywhere. The next print went a little better, but the print wound
up curling up on the edges. I have a lot to learn about 3D Printing.
A few DuckDuckGo searches later, I realized I should re-level my bed again and add a brim,
and so I did that, and—look! It worked!
So now just five more frames to print; that'll take...two days?!
Well, I might as well get started on the trays too, since those are kind of important to
actually hold the Pis in the rack.
I printed one with default settings, and it actually turned out great on the first try.
But then I realized that I didn't have the required 12mm M2.5 screws to mount the Pis, so off
to Amazon to order a bag of them!
Once they arrived, mounting the Pis to the standoffs was super easy.
Finally, I printed the two ears, and they were thankfully easy to get right on the first
try. So next I had to assemble the frames and the ears together.
I ran to Lowe's, grabbed 3 ft. of #10 threaded rod and some nuts.
I handed the rod over to Red Shirt Jeff, and he made a nice show of sparks while he cut
it with a dremel tool into two equal lengths.
Then, I got them back and assembled everything on my desk. To my surprise, everything fit together precisely.
Just don't overtighten the nuts, or you'll start cracking the plastic.
I mounted the thing in the rack, and slid in a couple Pis.
There's enough surface on the front of each tray to put a nice label the Pi it holds,
and that's a nice touch.
It's easiest to power these Pis over Ethernet, since USB-C port access is a little tough.
So I installed a PoE HAT on each Pi, and I'm using an Aruba PoE switch, one that's actually
really full-featured (and overkill for my needs right now). But I'll dive more into PoE and
this switch in particular in a future video, so subscribe!
Since I'm also running critical parts of my network on these Pis, I wanted to make sure
they stay up even through the brief power outages we get here in the Midwest, so I have the PoE switch plugged into the
APC UPS, which is complete overkill for my current setup, but if you've seen any of my
other videos, you know overkill is kind of the theme here.
Getting this UPS into the rack is a story in itself. Basically, if you're going to get
a supercharged UPS like this one for free like I did, maybe you should check the dimensions for
the rails before you buy a rack, and make sure your rack will fit the UPS without major
modifications.
In my case, I had to drill out some holes, chamfer the ends, and cut some square tube
to extend the back. And the way I have it mounted means I can't use all the UPS's mounting
hardware either, so it's kind of just sitting on the rails.
I mean, the thing's over a hundred pounds, so it's not like it's gonna slide out if I
just touch it.
And you might notice there's a 10 gig switch up on the top of this rack, and I'm wiring
everything with either Cat 6a or Cat 7 cabling. And you might wonder, "Why does that matter
for a bunch of Raspberry Pis?"
Well, spoiler alert, I also have 2.5 and 10 gig network cards working on the Pi Compute
Module 4, so check out my existing videos on 2.5 gig networking on the Pi, and subscribe
so you can see my future video on 10 gig networking on the Pi!
And I've shown you the rack, but what do these Pis do? Well, the first one here is my Internet
monitoring Pi, and also runs Pi-hole and DNS services for the house. It helps me keep my
ISP honest, and if you ask nicely in the comments, I might talk about the open source Ansible
playbook I use to set it up.
The second Pi is actually serving the Raspberry Pi Dramble website, pidramble.com, but I'm
going to move it back to my Kubernetes Pi cluster soon, after I migrate that cluster into this rack.
More on that later too.
And finally this little Pi at the end is monitoring my Starlink Internet on a separate network,
through a separate dedicated PoE switch. For those who've been asking, I'll have a full
review of Starlink very soon.
So there it is. Six Pis in a rack! Well, four right now, the other two are almost ready
to move.
Thanks to russross for designing the rack, and if you're wondering what other things
I'm gonna do in this rack, well, subscribe!
Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling.