> Rack mount hardware is almost always expensive, loud, and power hungry. I just have never seen the point of building a home lab like this.
Rack mount is just a form factor, so that generalization doesn't make sense. You can get pretty much any capacity systems you need in a rack case, including small cheap ones.
When I got tired of having systems in various different case sizes and a mess of wiring and switches etc, I moved everything at home to rack mounted.
Now literally everything is one big box (16U rack), with just power and network cables going in. All the computers, network switches, wiring, UPSs, KVM switch and monitor. Very tidy, very clean.
The computers themselves are cheap, quiet and efficient, since I don't need any monster servers at home. A couple are Atom-based (<20W total), one Celeron and one desktop AMD-based (forgot model). Same level of hardware I had before rack mounting, but now a lot neater and more organized.
True, if you build something inside a rackmount case then it can be whatever you want. However, from what I could tell empty rack mount case & rails are still a bit of a premium. Were you able to get rack mount case w/ rails at decent prices? Seems each one would have to be at least a 2U to fit a normal ATX PSU ( I guess you could use an ITX or small PSU but those can be more expensive for the same wattage).
How did you handle the system & case fans? Did you rack cases have the standard fans and were you able to configure those to be slow/quiet?
Rack mount is just a form factor, so that generalization doesn't make sense. You can get pretty much any capacity systems you need in a rack case, including small cheap ones.
When I got tired of having systems in various different case sizes and a mess of wiring and switches etc, I moved everything at home to rack mounted.
Now literally everything is one big box (16U rack), with just power and network cables going in. All the computers, network switches, wiring, UPSs, KVM switch and monitor. Very tidy, very clean.
The computers themselves are cheap, quiet and efficient, since I don't need any monster servers at home. A couple are Atom-based (<20W total), one Celeron and one desktop AMD-based (forgot model). Same level of hardware I had before rack mounting, but now a lot neater and more organized.