Well, I have found another addiction 
ESXi was so ridiculously easy to install on my HP server and one YouTube video later and I have 3 VMās up and running! What took me so friggen long? The closet in the laundry room is noisy as hell now but that is ok. Just means that the new fans I installed to keep the closet air moving and cool will be money well spent.
Hahaha yeah, my wife has said I have to get the servers out the house, so this week I am going to build a enclosure for the rack in my workshop, mount some fans and filters on it and run a couple of cat6 back into the house.
Got a patch panel and an another Unifi rack switch so I can have more network connections from the Dell server and my storage server.
Fun project I am working on atm is making our place a little more self-sustainable, managed to get a ton of second hand solar panels + charge controller / inverter, instead of getting an electrician to wire my shed and solar up to the main house I am just keeping it off-grid and feed all my hungry servers and freezers for less than the electrician quote. only thing I need to hunt down is a few thousand of 18650 batteries without bleeding me dry.
I have planned to move my server out to one of the shipping containers I have as storage but I need to do some modifications to it for ventilation. The area I live in (Seattle-ish) has temps that stay pretty manageable for server room temps with the exception of August or so when we can be well into the 90ās (Fahrenheit) and that steel can gets a little warmer than I would want without forced air ventilation when it comes to computers. That is the only reason I donāt already have it out there. Canāt keep it cool enough. That whole space will eventually be turned into a man cave and will be insulated and climate controlled but that is a couple years out.
They say that 18650 batteries are in plentiful supply used but good luck getting them for anything close to affordable. People are buying them by the semi truck load to make their own Tesla walls and you canāt get them from used equipment anymore. Probably cheaper to buy yourself a wrecked Tesla and use the battery sled from it insteadā¦ except that is being done now too.
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Yeah its crazy how popular they have become, I was talking to a young chap this morning who said there is about 11 new giga-factoryās getting built for battery production in china for various large companies.
So we could have a price drop and possibly some more advanced batteries coming online in the next year.
Sorry Iāve been away for awhile guys, I pave asphalt during the summer so Iāve been totally overworked 60+/hrs a weekā¦ i acquired 20x dell r710s for $1200 a cuple months ago, and cant wait till winter to play with them!!
Also for remotely accessing linux boxes my preferred tool is good ol āwinscpā and ssh rarely on certain stubborn systemsā¦
@JacobJohnson Twenty of them! Holy crap! That oughtta keep you busy this winter. I just got my HPDL380 G7 relocated to itās permanent home in the shipping container and all connected up so I too am ready to go nuts with it!
@Guru_Of_Nothing How are you planning on keeping the container cool over Summer? I need ideas for my server room. (Itās the walk in pantry).
@chris To start with, it sits in an area that is shaded by trees. I am going to add in thermostatically controlled fan and vents this winter as an added measure. Andā¦ I am going to set up a warning system that tells me if the container is getting too warm and I will shut the server down if it does so. At this point it it isnāt going to be a work horse so i donāt expect there to be a reason why I couldnāt shut it down. Being as we are in the Pacific Northwest, we donāt see a lot of hot weatherā¦ couple weeks or so maybe. By next summer I may be able to get a āserver roomā built in there with an air conditioner. It was in my coat closet and I had to cut a hole above the door and install 120mm fans and a grill to pull air from the floor and vent it out above the door to the laundry room space. Worked well but noisy with the server running. Hence the container. I met a guy that had a split AC unit installed in his closet to keep his gaming server cool. Youād have to get the other half to sign off though:-)
Iāve already installed door vents. Iām thinking a silent ceiling exhaust fan. Hopefully I donāt have to go the extreme of installing an AC unit 
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of CFM to clear out computer heat using a fan. Thought about using an old chest freezer I have and turning it into a server cooler until I watched a Linus Tech Tips video on a computer in a refrigerator and they donāt have the BTU transfer to do the job. Food doesnāt generate heat so the system can handle it.
DUDE! That just sparked an idea! Take the chest freezer and rack mount them vertically. Cut ducts into the box and connect them to a freestanding room AC unit! Small space that is controlled by a MUCH less expensive AC unit. Creates issues for wiringā¦ but if there was ever a better redneck, thatās me! LOL
ORā¦ a modded dehumidifier. Oh boy! I could get myself into ALL sorts of trouble with that.
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They make some heat, along with all my other serversā¦ I built a heavily insulated shed behind the house to house all the racks, I have 2 large window ac units, 1 set to 70, and the other set to 80ā¦ I ran 4x 4" conduits between the shed and the house underground and couldnāt be happierā¦ (I should mention I do have solar to slightly help with the power but itās not 100% covered by any means) all in all I pay around $130/mo extra for the servers but itās the only hobby I have that I have to pay for regularly so all in all not too terribleā¦ lol
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