A Computer Geeks Livingroom

How my wife Jan puts up with me is a mystery, I have more junk in the livingroom than most people have in their garage. My junk tho is mostly of a computer nature.

Here is a general shot of the Livingroom/Data Center

Action central, or the 'Bridge of the Enterprise' is here.

From this 'command post' we can run 'The Enterprise'. The outstanding item in this picture is the TV, which is an old Apple Mac Performa, with a 19 inch monitor, and a remote!

As with any 'Well Organized' computer network it is important to use meaningful names for the computers forming the backbone of your enterprise. This one is 'The Cardboard Box'.
My Co-Pilot Jan prefers a more traditional looking computer (she is old school!).

One of the big issues with a project of this size is support. It is important that all of the cables are well marked and easy to find.

Anyone can swipe their credit caard and buy Web Hosting. For about $15 a month you can find a gazzilion places that will host your corporate web site. The big fish tho like to host their sites on their own servers. Not wanting to have to rely on outside expertise I decided that 'In House' hosting was a must.

A better use for the BeerBox I can not think of.

With all of this networking going on it is critical to have a substantial 'Switch' to handle the Local and Remote network traffic.

Most serious data centers offer 'Hot Backup' servers, well mine are not really hot, more like 'Luke warm', they are ready to go when they are needed.

This IBM Aptiva is one of our 'Outdoor Puters', we drag it outside and use it to serve music and videos.

On the table is an IBM Thinkpad, Jan uses this as her Ipod. She drags it into the bedroom and listens to her music. Under the table is an Apple G3. I am not really an apple person, I really do not know much about them, but they are fun to play with. This apple G3 (old world mac) is running linux. It took 6 months of hard effort and drinking to get it to run linux, but I did it!

You can read the story here.

I do hope you have enjoyed this short introduction to 'Building Your Own Data Center in Your Livingroom'.

I am waiting for the job offers to roll in........