Me too. Even with 4U Mini ITX PC I'd still have plenty of space for switch, router, Home Assistant and 2U NAS or UPS. A 10" 2U UPS with DC outputs that'd allow you to power everything on the rack would be incredible
Small racks are underrated. Lots of people prefer small racks. If you're thinking of upgrading your rack, just find someone who appreciates the rack you already have.
I am so happy to see this. This post gets my juices flowing... I have been thinking about replacing my 42U rack with a custom 10" 12 U for home and a similar 10"4U for travel.
I'm on the hunt for a good PDU or UPS for it, that's my missing piece to make this thing perfect. I found a couple half-rack PDUs, one is for audio equipment, one is from China, but they're both over $50 shipped. There has to be a good way to mount up power on this thing!
@@JeffGeerling i look forward to your findings. Btw, I didn't realize deskpi's prices were so affordable. I might change my mind on a custom design and retrofit instead. Sweet! And thanks again! My first thought was to daisy-chain a set of "battery banks", either COTS or with a custom PCB. However, I am yet to consider switching times, overall reliability and lipo cells lifespan.
@@rubenb.molina6968 I would love to see a good power solution for mini racks. I can imagine just 12v/5v (or just 12v) could bring down complexity a lot.
@@JeffGeerlingwhat audio one did you find? Am an audio engineer and may be able to shed some light. If it's Furman, it's good stuff! But there's other brands out there, too.
Ooh now that could work out too! Or if you use the little 1U mini ITX trays they have, and find a CPU cooling setup and RAM that'll fit, you could get 7 computers in there, with one per guest!
Holy smokes! I've been dreaming about condensing my desktop computers into something more compact. I had moved everything into a 15U under my desk, but that little rack would fit ON my desk with my Mac, Linux box, and Windows box all in one!
The best UPS solution I've found is, if the rack has a bottom, you could put one of those consumer UPSes that's the form factor of a chunky power strip in there. Would take up 4U of space to allow for plugs (though if you maybe used some flat right angle plugs from a power strip or adapter Id bet you could do 3U).
I remember taking my old pc to my friend's house whenever we had a sleep over, so this would actually be better, especially with a UPS and low powered computers. Be cool to have a little screen that folds into the case and is easy to pull out. I think the laptop looking ones from a full size rack might be cool.
A network switch, a mini computer with Proxmox running Home Assistant and something like FreeNAS, and a UPS (if that last one exists in this size). That would tidy up all my home networking stuff very nicely.
I've seen a few bits of audio gear from Lowell and also on Sweetwater sound. There isn't a ton (besides things that would fit on a shelf), but I've seen some amps and small mixers at least.
Consider also the depth, not only the wide. Standard size allow to install all avaible hardware, . Plus, due the intended use as mobile rack , id strongly reccomend ruggered structure, shock mounting and lids
What I'd actually like to see is a tower-case-sized rack standard. This is actually a bit smaller than that, but imagine two cases side by side, one containing a PC and the other being a networking rack.
Probably an LTE modem/router from MikroTik, a small NAS, some mini-ITX servers like you have (with things like InfluxDB/Druid and Grafana) and something that can power everything for a few hours. Basically turn it into a small rack for when I go to a racing event so I can store my car's data logs and/or process + view them right there.
Awesome ! I'm literally planning out a mini-ITX daughter board to mount and mange a cluster of RPi5's, including being powered by a Pico ATX PSU / 24 PIN header
Great solution for the bare minimum for a home networking pop, modem/switch/AP/firewall (mini pc with opnsense). I’d be interested in a PDU that would accompany this form factor to keep all the devices power bricks within the rack. Maybe a pole/tray addition to set the AP. I literally thought of something like this last year and tried using a aluminum file tray organizer. Guess I should get a CNC 🥲
Throw out that Netgear switch and put in a Mikrotik CSS610-8G-2S+IN or other of their 200mm wide switches with their RMK-2/10 rack mount kit. These shelf-mounted switches seem to me as a makeshift solution. Let's hope that in the near future more vendors (Cisco, Ubiquiti, Netgear, TP-Link, Huawei, etc.) start producing 10" rack mounted gear, as that would help a lot in making this form factor more wide spread.
@@JeffGeerling you can use that kit to mount two half rack units side by side, or if you break off a part of it, then it will become a 10" mounting kit.
Built something similar from extruded aluminum profiles. Houses a "mobile" homelab with Mikrotik routers, pfsense on old barracuda hardware, and 2 itx boards with 10 core Xeon 64gb ddr3.
I just spent the entire day exploring 10 inch rack gear because of this vid :( .. the 2u cases is the only one I could find online.. but there is plenty of racks, patch panels and other covers/shelves.. here in Europe anyway
I love the size, and the idea of a small server for in-home use, but other than network storage, I have no idea how else I would use something like this, let alone a standard server. The only server use I would want is a NAS, maybe some kind of Steam dedicated PC that could be remote played by me or my kids on the living room TV (via Steam-link), or to their individual rooms when they're older.
The first thing that comes to mind is a USB flash drive. That is to say, a bunch of Zima Blades networked together with about as many external SSDs in RAID as you could cram into the desk pi, and a single USB out to transfer the data, as a DAS, lol. You could probably do some decent distributed machine learning if you were willing to buy the right mini PCs to do it, as a "practical" application.
My homelab is 9U 10inch rack. With PoE switch, patch panel, some RPi (and Oranges), two mini PCs with Proxmox (cluster) and a lot of 3D printed mounting. Shame there is not more 10 inch stuff :/
Definitely! What switch did you settle on? I'm looking for a decent 8-12 port PoE switch that'll fit. Wish they made rack ears for them, but a 3D printed adapter could work too.
I'd take it to mar's as the base basic entertainment system, dedicated plex/cdn server. Also hosting a whole host of game servers to allow people to wind down at the eod.
Where can buy one? This is cool! 😎👍 Edit: For me run, I will modify and run the hardware by connecting four raspberry pi 4 and 1 raspberry pi 3 where it can run multiple type 1 hypervisor that need to be access through authentication, primarily kerberos or TACACS +, to see if can work. That's a big if.....🤔
Could you compare this with a Navepoint 10 inch rack? They're one of the only other companies offering a rack in this form factor in the US, and they have a 12U four post cabinet for a similar price!
i really enjoy it! i don't have much space, so i got inspired by you and this video do make my own project! from scratch, and i will try to document the best i can. does the channel have a discord? when things start fo form shape maybe a post something there :)
I was thinking of a mini plex sever or NAS but requires some hard thinking as I'm completely newish to rack builds. Right now I'm using a old gaming rig but will need more HDD space soon.
just got mine in today.. and had to modify to fit some components (synology has sticks out the back and is too wide for the back rails). having a heck of a time finding 10 in rack components. everything seems to just a little to wide. Do you have any suggestions where you got your components (like that half height patch panel)
I would try to connect a bunch of networked terminals, and try a computer time sharing system. That and web hosting, minecraft servers lol just because. Render farm? Network Attached storage with little HDDs?
It's not the size of the rack that matters, it's what you do with it. :D Me? I'd probably do something insane like try to run Openstack on a fleet of Pis.
Good question! I backed their Kickstarter months ago... still waiting on the shipment of 10" rack and 10 blades, but hopefully they'll start shipping to the public soon after. They just started shipping out blades to backers last month.
Jeff don't worry, rack size is nothing to be ashamed of.
What about a tiny DAC? It’s all I have to play my music.
@@sighko05 it all about the motion of the frequency not the size of the dac ;)
hey 10inch is kinda you know well big
I‘d love to build a pc in one of these.
Me too. Even with 4U Mini ITX PC I'd still have plenty of space for switch, router, Home Assistant and 2U NAS or UPS. A 10" 2U UPS with DC outputs that'd allow you to power everything on the rack would be incredible
multiple pcs
@@limepotato I was thinking multiple graphics cards (I‘m doing deep learning) and maybe a NAS server.
@@Daddo22 Might as well build the rack, too. That would allow you to build it to your own spec.
Small racks are underrated. Lots of people prefer small racks. If you're thinking of upgrading your rack, just find someone who appreciates the rack you already have.
😂
i can appreciate racks of any size really
All racks deserve love.
Nope
You are SO RIGHT!
TRUE
@@Internatube but what if it has a great personality
I am so happy to see this. This post gets my juices flowing... I have been thinking about replacing my 42U rack with a custom 10" 12 U for home and a similar 10"4U for travel.
I'm on the hunt for a good PDU or UPS for it, that's my missing piece to make this thing perfect. I found a couple half-rack PDUs, one is for audio equipment, one is from China, but they're both over $50 shipped. There has to be a good way to mount up power on this thing!
@@JeffGeerling i look forward to your findings. Btw, I didn't realize deskpi's prices were so affordable. I might change my mind on a custom design and retrofit instead. Sweet! And thanks again!
My first thought was to daisy-chain a set of "battery banks", either COTS or with a custom PCB. However, I am yet to consider switching times, overall reliability and lipo cells lifespan.
@@rubenb.molina6968 I would love to see a good power solution for mini racks. I can imagine just 12v/5v (or just 12v) could bring down complexity a lot.
@@JeffGeerlingwhat audio one did you find? Am an audio engineer and may be able to shed some light. If it's Furman, it's good stuff! But there's other brands out there, too.
@@Kitteh.B Atlas Power, I haven't personally tested it but it seems well reviewed at least.
The best part is not needing those weird clips that cut up fingers
Heh, cage nuts. But then how do you offer the blood sacrifice every time you install something?
@@JeffGeerling The Blood Sacrafice™ will find a way. I didn't have cage nuts and still found a way to cut myself while installing rails for a server.
Y’all need Patchbox /dev/mount instead of cage nuts.
I have my network gear in a 6u 10" rack that fits perfectly in a ikea kallax shelf.
Ooh... put a bunch of them in each little cubby and you have a mini HPC cluster in your living room :D
On the cableporn forum I saw a bunch of people using Ikea. I think IKEA Lack tables
Easy portable gaming server, with networking, guest gaming VMs on a PC and a display on the side for monitoring and game scores.
Ooh now that could work out too! Or if you use the little 1U mini ITX trays they have, and find a CPU cooling setup and RAM that'll fit, you could get 7 computers in there, with one per guest!
Holy smokes! I've been dreaming about condensing my desktop computers into something more compact. I had moved everything into a 15U under my desk, but that little rack would fit ON my desk with my Mac, Linux box, and Windows box all in one!
It's the perfect size for a Mac mini!
All racks are beautiful
That lools soo cool. Thank you for showing it, will use it in my new project.
For many looking to get into making their first home lab, this is a perfect choice for small scale learning.
a MOTU ultralite audio interface would fit nicely
You got a point and I’m all for it
you just sent my imagination into a tailspin with this comment.
this is really cool, with more companies will do something like this, and products for this size.
The best UPS solution I've found is, if the rack has a bottom, you could put one of those consumer UPSes that's the form factor of a chunky power strip in there. Would take up 4U of space to allow for plugs (though if you maybe used some flat right angle plugs from a power strip or adapter Id bet you could do 3U).
There's still room to put two cups on top of that rack. It all depends on the cup size really.
I'd build hi-fi gear for that. Cute little thing of beauty.
"Flat?"
"Just as god made me!"
I remember taking my old pc to my friend's house whenever we had a sleep over, so this would actually be better, especially with a UPS and low powered computers. Be cool to have a little screen that folds into the case and is easy to pull out. I think the laptop looking ones from a full size rack might be cool.
A network switch, a mini computer with Proxmox running Home Assistant and something like FreeNAS, and a UPS (if that last one exists in this size). That would tidy up all my home networking stuff very nicely.
Oh man, I didn’t know these existed, these seem super super useful actually.
I would actually LOVE this for running 2 or 3 x86 ITX PCs. "Desktop" server rack
Having this for a portable DJing setup would be sick, just not sure how much equipment is available in a 10" form factor
I've seen a few bits of audio gear from Lowell and also on Sweetwater sound. There isn't a ton (besides things that would fit on a shelf), but I've seen some amps and small mixers at least.
Could fit in an MT32 and a Roland Sound Canvas, doubt you'd get a scratch deck in there though.
@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 Definitely not lol, more thinking that you could put the decks on a table and hook up to the rack underneath it
Consider also the depth, not only the wide. Standard size allow to install all avaible hardware, . Plus, due the intended use as mobile rack , id strongly reccomend ruggered structure, shock mounting and lids
What I'd actually like to see is a tower-case-sized rack standard. This is actually a bit smaller than that, but imagine two cases side by side, one containing a PC and the other being a networking rack.
Probably an LTE modem/router from MikroTik, a small NAS, some mini-ITX servers like you have (with things like InfluxDB/Druid and Grafana) and something that can power everything for a few hours.
Basically turn it into a small rack for when I go to a racing event so I can store my car's data logs and/or process + view them right there.
Awesome ! I'm literally planning out a mini-ITX daughter board to mount and mange a cluster of RPi5's, including being powered by a Pico ATX PSU / 24 PIN header
Great solution for the bare minimum for a home networking pop, modem/switch/AP/firewall (mini pc with opnsense). I’d be interested in a PDU that would accompany this form factor to keep all the devices power bricks within the rack. Maybe a pole/tray addition to set the AP. I literally thought of something like this last year and tried using a aluminum file tray organizer. Guess I should get a CNC 🥲
Throw out that Netgear switch and put in a Mikrotik CSS610-8G-2S+IN or other of their 200mm wide switches with their RMK-2/10 rack mount kit. These shelf-mounted switches seem to me as a makeshift solution.
Let's hope that in the near future more vendors (Cisco, Ubiquiti, Netgear, TP-Link, Huawei, etc.) start producing 10" rack mounted gear, as that would help a lot in making this form factor more wide spread.
Oh nice! I never knew Mikrotik made a half rack kit like that-just ordered two, since I have a spare microtik CRS half-width switch I can test.
@@JeffGeerling you can use that kit to mount two half rack units side by side, or if you break off a part of it, then it will become a 10" mounting kit.
It's like a "mosquito bite" rack
Jeff for such a little rack it's quite stacked.
This looks perfect for an fpga development/accelerator build
I love this rackmount frame! 😍
Built something similar from extruded aluminum profiles.
Houses a "mobile" homelab with Mikrotik routers, pfsense on old barracuda hardware, and 2 itx boards with 10 core Xeon 64gb ddr3.
I just spent the entire day exploring 10 inch rack gear because of this vid :( .. the 2u cases is the only one I could find online.. but there is plenty of racks, patch panels and other covers/shelves.. here in Europe anyway
In the US we have so few options!
@@JeffGeerling yea such a shame, the rack you have is very expensive, compared to some of the stuff available here in Europe.
Need this for my dorm room, would be perfect
Happy Birthday BASIC!!!
I'm actually in the process of making my own server rack from scratch. I'm using a Minisflrum AMD 8 core mini PC as the base.
Geerling = Tech GOAT.
I need a UPS that fits this form factor
Ditto!
Been caressing the idea of 10" for my next devops lab 😍😍😍
Looks really cool, could you do a full video on it?
You're in luck! I did over on my 3rd channel, "Level 2 Jeff".
@@JeffGeerling I see, must have missed that. Omw, thanks 👍
This is a great idea
we need a 10" rack mounted KVM to hook it all up
Proxmox or Docker cluster with a SAN. 3 x x86 systems and 10gb switch.
I would use it for audio equipment, like a sound card, a compressor etc
I love the size, and the idea of a small server for in-home use, but other than network storage, I have no idea how else I would use something like this, let alone a standard server.
The only server use I would want is a NAS, maybe some kind of Steam dedicated PC that could be remote played by me or my kids on the living room TV (via Steam-link), or to their individual rooms when they're older.
Oh i would love something like this. Althought i would maybe want to the handles out and lay it on its side so that it fits on a shelf in a closet.
A drupal front end for me to drop videos into my ML ingest pipeline!! wow this is exactly what I want!
I have been looking for something exactly like this!!!
The first thing that comes to mind is a USB flash drive. That is to say, a bunch of Zima Blades networked together with about as many external SSDs in RAID as you could cram into the desk pi, and a single USB out to transfer the data, as a DAS, lol.
You could probably do some decent distributed machine learning if you were willing to buy the right mini PCs to do it, as a "practical" application.
This is soooo cool! I want one
That looks awesome!
My homelab is 9U 10inch rack. With PoE switch, patch panel, some RPi (and Oranges), two mini PCs with Proxmox (cluster) and a lot of 3D printed mounting. Shame there is not more 10 inch stuff :/
Definitely! What switch did you settle on? I'm looking for a decent 8-12 port PoE switch that'll fit. Wish they made rack ears for them, but a 3D printed adapter could work too.
Not-managable Tenda TEG1110PF-8-102W. It has 8 PoE ports plus one uplink plus one SFP uplink (10 ports total)
Former Coworker has one of these with a bunch of 1 liter PCs in it
I need a video of this detailing the components and that their function is, I was only able to understand about half of this
I guess Netgear AV switches or small Meraki ones would fit lovely in there.
Right now I'd run CI/CD for Candle, the Rust Machine Learning framework.
Would love to see a micro Centurion at that scale
I'd take it to mar's as the base basic entertainment system, dedicated plex/cdn server. Also hosting a whole host of game servers to allow people to wind down at the eod.
Finding equipment that would fit in these non-standard racks is truly a pain though. And good luck if you're on some sort of budget.
Where can buy one? This is cool! 😎👍
Edit: For me run, I will modify and run the hardware by connecting four raspberry pi 4 and 1 raspberry pi 3 where it can run multiple type 1 hypervisor that need to be access through authentication, primarily kerberos or TACACS +, to see if can work. That's a big if.....🤔
looks amazing ,
Could you compare this with a Navepoint 10 inch rack? They're one of the only other companies offering a rack in this form factor in the US, and they have a 12U four post cabinet for a similar price!
I like this rack so much 😍
How much power does all of this pull? Would love an answer to this. Thank you so much for showing us this, it is very interesting.
Baby's first rack! Ethernet cables sold separately.
i really enjoy it! i don't have much space, so i got inspired by you and this video do make my own project! from scratch, and i will try to document the best i can. does the channel have a discord? when things start fo form shape maybe a post something there :)
Jeff is obsessed with tiny things
do a fully silent home server setup so I can shove it into my spare storage room which is behind a thin wall.
Id love to make a NAS server with one of those!
That's nice and all, but what's the compatibility like?
How many modules actually exist for 10" as opposed to the common 19" size and at what cost?
Computers and radios, Jeff. Computers and radios.
These are great. Can you please list where you got the various face plates/hardware from?
I wasn't even aware that these existed. I have some 25U worth of 1980/1990/2000s rackmount synths, and they're not light. At all.
Would add a pi rack and the two full size it one would be a firewall and the other kubernetes cluster with the pi rack.
is it very cheap or does it cost more then a second hand server that uses about the same power and space but has way more processing power ... ?
where did you get a half height 10" keystone patch panel? ive been looking for one of those for ages!
From DeskPi; they sell it separately from this little unit!
@@JeffGeerlingthat looks 3D printable! Thanks!
Dude i want this 😮😮😮
Jeff running his own Itty bitty committee?
Ideal for home networking, nvr, nas and homeassistant and of course proxmox
I dont know what he says kr does but i like seeing weird tech in these videos.
GIANT PI CLUSTER :D
Nice Rack
This is the only case where this kind of comment is appropriate.
Bucks
I was thinking of a mini plex sever or NAS but requires some hard thinking as I'm completely newish to rack builds. Right now I'm using a old gaming rig but will need more HDD space soon.
just got mine in today.. and had to modify to fit some components (synology has sticks out the back and is too wide for the back rails). having a heck of a time finding 10 in rack components. everything seems to just a little to wide. Do you have any suggestions where you got your components (like that half height patch panel)
I would build it as a portable HF digital communications setup.
wow amazing
Mini racks, are still very hard to find parts for. I hope that changes
Can you attach rails and a metal shelf rather than rack ears? I would love something like this for the many 1 liter PCs I run.
Seeing the title, I knew what you meant, and STILL, my brain went, "Hehe, little oppai!"
seems like something designed for traveling with audio equipment
I would build a portable high-end karaoke system.
If possible, Proxmox cluster.
I would try to connect a bunch of networked terminals, and try a computer time sharing system.
That and web hosting, minecraft servers lol just because.
Render farm? Network Attached storage with little HDDs?
It's not the size of the rack that matters, it's what you do with it. :D
Me? I'd probably do something insane like try to run Openstack on a fleet of Pis.
Where do I get that right angle board for bringing the power and hdmi port flush with the rest of the ports? Needed that since the pi1 launch.
What are you using the compute blades for?
That's cute.
More affordable 1U, 2U, or 3U 19" racks would probably change that a little bit. 19" x 19" x ? would be awkward, but possible to put in a car's trunk.
Jeff, how to get compute blades? Do you have a recent review video of rack and compute blade?
Good question! I backed their Kickstarter months ago... still waiting on the shipment of 10" rack and 10 blades, but hopefully they'll start shipping to the public soon after. They just started shipping out blades to backers last month.