Why not build everything in or as a 19 inch rack?
Various reaons. 1) 19″ chassis are really noisy, more so than the systems I’m using. 2) I buy new systems on an as-needed basis and not just to add more hardware to the network so it’s often much easier to pick the hardware that matches my requirements and matches hardware configurations that are representative of what the software I work on will be running on. 3) choice of rackmountable motherboards is more limited unless picked for other specific purposes. 4) It is much easier to frequently replace systems with new ones and have complete freedom of choice for hardware, chassis, graphics cards, etc. Having said all that, I am actually looking into building up a 19″ rack with 5 or 6 nodes, mainly aimed at creating a slightly different virtual machine infrastructure but that will have to wait until I redesign the office or until the need for one increases.
Various reaons. 1) 19″ chassis are really noisy, more so than the systems I’m using. 2) I buy new systems on an as-needed basis and not just to add more hardware to the network so it’s often much easier to pick the hardware that matches my requirements and matches hardware configurations that are representative of what the software I work on will be running on. 3) choice of rackmountable motherboards is more limited unless picked for other specific purposes. 4) It is much easier to frequently replace systems with new ones and have complete freedom of choice for hardware, chassis, graphics cards, etc. Having said all that, I am actually looking into building up a 19″ rack with 5 or 6 nodes, mainly aimed at creating a slightly different virtual machine infrastructure but that will have to wait until I redesign the office or until the need for one increases.
