[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to make a photogenic server room
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Ask HN: How to make a photogenic server room
We are opening a new office and will have our network / server gear
in a room with a large window facing a customer reception area.
We're told it'd be nice if the racks looked nice through the glass.
Does anyone sell...decorative server equipment? Something useless
with a bunch of blinky lights? This is one of the stranger requests
we've dealt with.
Author : focusedone
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-06-16 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
| otikik wrote:
| Get one of these as a ceterpiece:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1
|
| Put the real servers around it, and make sure to put a lot of
| LEDs on them. If the company is good, use blue LEDs. If the
| company is evil, use red LEDS.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Hire an actor to wander through the server room every so often
| wearing a black hoodie with the hood up, sticking cables and USBs
| into different parts of the equipment. Especially during security
| audits and investor meetings, but also during the CEO's all-hands
| meeting.
| Minor49er wrote:
| Stuff some Christmas lights into some empty computer cases,
| especially ones that automatically blink and fade. Also, get a
| fog machine that you can turn on whenever you need a break from
| work (just remember to keep stocked up on fogger juice)
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Fog looks a lot like smoke. I'm not sure that's what you want
| to see coming from the server room...
| Minor49er wrote:
| That's why I mentioned that it should be used when OP needs a
| break from work
| lozaning wrote:
| Apple at NAB 2007 is peak server room aesthetic to me.
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/19/high_quality_phot...
|
| All that gear is EOL now and can be picked up for cheap on ebay.
| Setup some xserves to just send data back and forth between
| Xserve raid arrays for maximum blinken lightsen
| readbeard wrote:
| Really cool! Thanks for sharing. I miss Apple products from
| those years.
| rsync wrote:
| If you want some bling in your server racks you can add 1U and 2U
| multi-monitor displays and show status and/or visualization on
| small displays that most people aren't aware even exist:
|
| https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1U-2-Rackmount-LCD-Pa...
|
| https://www.pimfg.com/product-detail/RACK-LCD-35-4
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Blackmagic-Design-Smartview-Rackmount...
| JonAtkinson wrote:
| Ask Reddit at /r/cableporn. They will be thrilled to have you.
| DamonHD wrote:
| I was once asked to be a partly-decorative sysadmin in a similar
| situation but offered to split the fees with an actual male model
| in a smart suit while I did the crawling under desks bit...
|
| What are model rates in your area compared to cost of eye candy
| hardware?
| bradstewart wrote:
| Buy servers from https://oxide.computer/ ?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Honestly I would go get some gaming PC bling (RGB lights etc) and
| build a 'fake' server room that's just for marketing or show, but
| not actually used for anything serious. Whatever makes the silly
| boss/owner that made the demand happy.
|
| At the same time aggressively build out cheaper cloud or proper
| on-prem server hosting room. Because ultimately what is the
| lowest cost to run will be pretty boring with high density racks
| and absolute minimum of power sucking junk like extra lights,
| etc. I'd be far more concerned about physical security, fire
| suppression, backup power and cooling than bling factor for a
| real on-prem datacenter.
| whalesalad wrote:
| https://reddit.com/r/serverporn
| giarc wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ServerPorn/comments/33mw99/we_had_s...
| ldargin wrote:
| Making it neat will probably go farther than adding fake blinking
| lights. Avoid empty rack spaces, dangling cables, etc.
| oakwhiz wrote:
| Wide racks, structured cabling, cable combs, "real" overhead
| tray, clever lighting. Buy multiple exact lengths of cables
| instead of using service loops. Use the right kind of PDUs to
| minimize power cable lengths.
|
| You can order custom racks and have them use any metal or paints
| that you want.
|
| Hire good electricians, get them to bend hard metallic conduit
| instead of flexible or plastic, have it bundled instead of just
| surface mounted. Additionally have an engineer draw up all of the
| conduit plans ahead of time instead of just letting the
| electricians figure out something random.
|
| Edit: Buy loopback SFP modules and put them in all unused ports
| on switches and servers, then set the port on a VLAN and/or IP
| address that doesn't go anywhere. Then use multicast pings to
| make it blink.
|
| Edit 2: Buy more switches to do this kind of thing if you don't
| have enough switches to make it look interesting. You could use
| bunches of 48 short 6 inch cables to make a routing protocol lab
| on several pieces of 10+ year old equipment, and then have
| beautiful blinking lights all over the place.
| the_biot wrote:
| I think this is bad advice, frankly. Such things are not
| unusual, non-tech suits always want blinkenlights and such,
| because they think it'll impress prospective customers. The
| stories I could tell, datacenters like circus acts.
|
| The key is to keep the blinkencrap away from the _real_ network
| /servers/patch panels, because those things have to actually
| _work_ at all times, and it 's your neck if it doesn't.
|
| When you start adding extra switches and whatnot to the network
| just because they look and blink nice, you're actually adding
| points of failure into the network, stuff that can affect your
| network for whatever reason if something goes wrong.
|
| I would advise either outright refusing to do it, or adding
| completely unconnected bling like rsync's comment lists --
| expensive junk that serves no purpose except look flashy. But
| just never connect that crap to a production network.
| [deleted]
| Bud wrote:
| Hire talented pros, who care about the details, to design your
| rack and do your cabling. I can give you some referrals if you'd
| like. I was on the project to build Apple Park and I know the
| guys who did the cabling for that job. Extremely clean and
| attractive work.
| a_developer314 wrote:
| sorry I have to reply
|
| XDDDDDDDD
|
| EDIT: On topic, buy some custom led strips, ask the clients what
| is their favourite color when entering the area, and
| automagically switch
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| How about the alternative of leaving it a rats nest of wires and
| adding an animated sculpture of an IT person trying to make sense
| of it all?
| h2odragon wrote:
| Network patch panels with nicely bundled wires might work;
| switches often have numerous blinky lights.
|
| You could dig up some antique gear and make it run: tape loader
| robots or even 9 track tapes with reels. It's been a long time
| since they did flashy innards on display stuff like that so its
| in the uncomfortable range between "scrap" and "industrial
| antiques" now.
|
| Or just admit it's all for show and commission an artist to make
| something cool. We have better blinky lights technology than ever
| before with addressable RGB LED strips and panels and many
| examples of their use.
|
| You can tell the bosses that putting real production servers on
| display would be a security issue. say "Tempest" and nod
| knowingly. As long as you dont smirk they'll usually go along.
| Vexs wrote:
| You could pretty reasonably hook up a string of ws2812s to be a
| server load monitor or similar... might be a fun project.
| sbbr wrote:
| Colocate your servers in proper datacetner.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Create a waterproof wall of glass around the room's glass walls,
| fill the between space with water and aquarium plants, put some
| fish.
|
| And in the server space proper, put a Cray in the middle, the one
| that looks like a 60s outer space couch, and hire a couple of
| str--
|
| I think the fish will do fine.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Q: What kind of fish belongs in a server room? A: A crayfish!
| ggm wrote:
| At UQ in Queensland we hung a plastic yabbie inside the crays
| flourinert recycling tank (The flourinert tank had a ballcock
| and was basically like a see through toilet cistern, hidden
| inside a normal cabinet.)
|
| (A yabbie is an Australian crayfish)
| foreigner wrote:
| Colour coordinated network cables
| Apreche wrote:
| Get network cables with colors that coordinate with your
| company's branding.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Is it just one rack? Just get an enclosed rack and have your
| companies marketing people get a vinyl overlay printed for the
| front (ala the current Cray Supercomputers.)
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, you can get blinky boxes from prop houses. They will cost
| too much, because they're usually rented by the day. Also try
| this recycling company.[1]
|
| More usefully, just make everything tidy, and put a big screen or
| two, running some kind of status display, in there, facing the
| window.
|
| [1] https://www.protekrecycling.com
| jjgreen wrote:
| Have a small antique desk for the operator, get an SGI or an iMac
| G3 on there, add an (empty) cocktail glass.
| a-dub wrote:
| salvage faceplates from a bunch of old suns and netapps and use
| them to cover all your modern gear!
|
| put an atari console in the middle with a cartridge sticker with
| the name of your company on and a portable crt television with
| rotary channel dials rendering an 8-bit home computer era
| rendition of a grafana graph.
| focusedone wrote:
| Additional information: nothing mission critical is in this room.
| Everything important is in another building. This room is almost
| completely decorative.
|
| The coolest idea so far has been switches with loopback sfps -
| that's brilliant! We've got some decommissioned stuff that'd be
| perfect for that.
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(page generated 2022-06-16 23:01 UTC)