"The mind can absorb only what the ass can endure” - Unknown

Sitting in a hard-backed chair for lectures or in front of a computer screen suffering from Death by Powerpoint for hours will only get someone so far; eventually, you have to get off your ass and do something. This rings very true for my brain. I have to screw the screws and hammer the nails. Over the past several weeks I have been watching YouTube videos, reading magazines, and looking closely at all the mock-up servers at school. At this point, I think I can name all the components and have some grasp of how they all interconnect. So this week I decided to start my own project; I’m going to build my own server. I started out by searching Amazon for the cheapest server rack I could find. I thought that I wanted an enclosed system, but the more I thought about it the more it became a dumb idea. See, I have limited space to place this thing and I want to future-proof it as much as possible. The enclosed rack would just not cut it because I wil need to access it from all sides. I know how these things go for me. I will get it together than have to take it all apart again because I fucked something or another up. Knowing that has led me to get this chaper-than-dirt open swing door server rack from Amazon (pictured above). The rack came unassembled but it was only four screws to put it together. The door works fine and there are plenty of slots to store the things I am going to be putting into it.

On My Bench
Home Lab Build

February 14, 2025

Learning where to start when beginning a new project for me is half the battle. What is my goal and how am I going to get the end result I am looking for? I am currently learning all I can absorb about the I.T world. I have a school that I attend weekly in person as well as schools I am attending online (Network Chuck Academy and UDEMY). The upside of using multiple sources is that each provides a different and distinct perspective teaching style that works well with my ADHD brain. The downside is that none of them offer the physical experience my brain requires to retain what I have learned. I learn best by doing and although these resources are fantastic ways to acquire knowledge about the field of I.T, I actually have to do it, fuck up and do it again to learn it.

Reading from a book is one thing, doing it is quite another.

Next, I knew I would need a switch. Now a switch is a device that takes ethernet connections from a router, printers, or other devices and controls the traffic coming from everything else on a network using packet switching to receive data and send it to its intended location. If a laptop wants to print, the laptop sends a request out over the ethernet cable to the switch and the switch routes the request to the connected printer on the network. The switch is a traffic cop on a really busy intersection. I knew that I would need a good-quality traffic cop in my network, so I went shopping. Facebook marketplace is your friend here. Why pay full price when you can use someone's no longer-needed tech to achieve the same goal? Netgear POE (power over internet) 24 port rackmount switch on Amazon: $379.00 as of 2/2025. Facebook marketplace: $40.00 used. I found my solution.

Along with my Switch, I would need a good router. My current router is an all-in-one POS (not really an I.T acronym but it could be, it stands for a piece of shit) from my ISP (Internet Service Provider). Eventually I will be upgrading that to a PFSence Open source router, but for now I settled for a Netgear Nighthawk WiFi 6 from Bestbuy.

So this is where I am at currently in my home lab building journey. I have the rack up. The switch is hung and the router set. My next goal is to get a PDU (Power Distribution Unit) to provide multiple slots to plug everything in as well as backup power to allow for the server system to power off gradually as it should instead of suffering instant power loss during a power outage. I also want a good 1U patch panel and some shelving to store all the Raspberry Pi’s I have. I will be sure to keep updating this Blog as I go so anyone actually following me can keep up to date.

Rack Mount for Netgear JGS524 24 port 1Gig Switch.stl 3D Print file located on Thingyverse.com. All the accolades go to the author and creator.