Hey guys!
It’s Mike from The Geek Pub!
And on this episode we’re going to install this awesome 19” network rack!
OK.
So as you can see when we moved into the house the builder had this panel installed and the
AV company that did it probably did the piss poorest job that I’ve ever seen in my entire
life.
And so unfortunately that is what we have to work with.
And unfortunately I don’t believe I am going to change this because I think it would be
too much trouble and I’m afraid that the wiring won’t reach if I try to put a real
patch panel in here and try to wire this correctly.
All of the cables test to spec so I am just going to leave that the way it is.
What we are going to do is we’re going to put a 19” rack right here and we’re going
to bolt that to the wall.
And then we will move all of the switches, so as you can see here I’ve got these Ikea
shelves and basically all of my network gear, my firewall, my switches, my NVR for my cameras,
my UPS.
Everything is just sitting here on these Ikea shelves because there is no possible way they
were going to go in there.
And with that they’ll go into this 19” rack.
So now the problem is the wall does not have any studs that are 16” on center and unfortunately
that’s what my rack needs to bolt to the wall so what I will do first is put a sheet
of plywood on the wall.
I’ll run that into the studs and then we’ll bolt the rack up to the plywood.
And so let’s get started and cut a sheet of plywood.
So the first thing I did was measure the wall and it came out about 27 3/4 inches.
So I cut it about 1/16 of an inch shy of that.
The plywood I used was 3/4 inch cabinet grade pine, and my wife was very nice to help me
push it through the saw.
I attached the plywood to the wall about three feet off the ground using nine two and half
inch drywall screws.
I then marked and pre-drilled the four holes for the rack bolts, and then ran the bolts
in half way.
From there you can just hang the rack on the four bolts.
It just slides into the slots.
And to finish it off, I used a socket wrench to tinted the bolts securely, because I could
not find my impact driver bits!
I also installed four d-rings that will be used for cable management.
Two for data cabling and two for power cables.
In the bottom of the rack I installed a 10 outlet rack mount power strip that will provide
power for the rack equipment.
It takes up one U of rack space, but it makes power management much easier.
The next thing I did was use some masking tape and labeled all of the cables.
This way I can put everything back in the same port so that my VLANs and firewall rules
won’t be affected.
Then its just a matter of installing all of the equipment in the rack and plugging the
cables back in.
After I got all of the cables in place, I used some velcro wrap to bundle and secure
them, about every six inches.
So the rack that I bought is a really nice rack.
It’s a really heavy duty sturdy unit.
The one thing I don’t like is that is has this big hole up here in the top of it because
I want to be able to set stuff on top of it such as my server, my NVR, and some things
like that that aren’t rack mountable.
And so what I did was I got this cheap Ikea shelf which happens to be the exact same size
as the rack itself and I am just going to hold it on with some industrial velcro.
That way I can always remove it anytime I want very easily, but it will make the perfect
shelf for sitting stuff on top.
First up is my NVR.
Follow that up with my Plex Media Server NAS.
Then a couple of PCs from work I am using for a lab, and the hard drives in a cradle
I am using for that same lab.
Well that wraps up the installation of the network rack.
There’s a couple things left that I want to do.
The first one is I want to mount this airport extreme, which is my wireless for the upstairs,
I want to mount it either up here on the peg board or maybe even higher up on the wall,
I am not sure.
But my total mount did not come in on time for the video so unfortunately I won’t be
able to show you that.
But its basically just a cup that goes on the bottom and then it mounts anywhere on
the wall.
The second thing that I think I am going to go ahead and do is clean this up and I know,
I don’t want to do it.
But after seeing all of this completed I just feel like I need to do that so probably.
I won’t make a video about it, but probably I’ll go ahead and clean that up.
Well that wraps up the video, thank you so much for watching.
Please do me a favor and like this video and subscribe to my channel on youtube.
And if you want to go more in depth on this project, head over to TheGeekPub.com.a
Well, stay tuned for a future video and I’ll give a tour of my home network.