We are preparing to build a house, and I am debating using a coat closet as a network closet, or just putting this in my home office.

To be honest I like the look of server racks but I would be lying if I could identify all the parts of the rack. What all would you put on a server rack? We will have POE Cameras, Several Ethernet runs throughout the house. and at some point in the future I would like to have whole home audio.

This is what I have:

Modem
Router
Managed Switch
Media Server
Network Attached Storage

That gets me ethernet to my two wireless Access Points, two security cameras, my desktop, my XBOX, and a few Apple TVs. My switch powers the APs and cameras over POE.

The nice thing about having it in one space is its easier to manage. Everything is there and you don't have stuff in different rooms running different parts of your network. If you do this though, you'll want to make sure you put in some sort of ventilation as all that gear will put off some heat. Doesn't need to be super cold or setup like a proper server room, but at least an inch or so gap in between the floor and the door to allow cool air in and some sort of fan at the top to exhaust the hot air out.

The downside of running this in your office is all that gear could get a little noisy.

Modem, Router, Switch panel, POE injectors, Lutron Smart Bridge, Hue Bridge, 2 AV Receivers, 1 5-channel Amp, Tivo, Tivo Mini, Xbox One X, Xbox One S, PS4 Pro, Nintendo Switch, Distribution amplifier, 3 Sonos Controllers.

That's it.

Crap. Left out my mini gaming PC and Oculus.

Nothing. Everything is wifi.

Modem, router, two switches, NAS, pi cluster, 2 HP dl360 G8 servers for stuff and things, 2 UPS, and several other things I'm not using yet.

Space sure goes quick if you try to put it all in one place. We have a full rack in a game room closet containing:

Atlona 8x8 HDMI Matrix
Control4 Controller
Control4 8x8 Matrix
Control4 IO Extender
Sonos bridge
Wirepath Surveillance PC for POE cameras
24 port switch
ATT Uverse gateway
4 Uverse boxes/DVR
Yamaha receiver
Disney Circle
2 BluRay players
Xbox 360
Xbox One
PS4

I put a fan (like a high-powered bathroom vent fan) in the ceiling that keeps things moving fairly well. If you duct it for HVAC you'll blow hot air in during the winter, so instead of jack with all that we'll keep the doors cracked if necessary and just vent the hot air out 24x7.

Cable Modem
Wireless router
Receiver
Media center PC
Gaming PC
XBox
XBox 360
XBox One
PS2
PS3
Modded PS2
Wii
Wii U
GameCube
CD player
Tape Deck
Turntable
VCR (I dub the occasional family movie)
System selector for game systems that use component/composite
Couple thousand movies, games, and CDs

Pre-HDMI systems are moving to the game room once that gets going, along with their games. That should free up a lot of space. It's a little tight in there right now.

I have a rack in a closet where all the home-run wiring converges that contains:

24 port Managed POE Switch
Unifi Cloudkey
VOIP Adapters
Pi for Pi-hole
Power Distribution
Keystone Patch Panels (labeling is key)

Modem, Router, NAS and Blue Iris server are located in the office for easier access.

2 DL360's? Running a data center for your neighborhood? Nice.

One Linux and one WIN OS?

HECUBUS said:

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2 DL360's? Running a data center for your neighborhood? Nice.

One Linux and one WIN OS?

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Both running ESXI with a mix of Windows and Linux VMs. One is production with server 2016, CentOS running Plex (and Plex stuff) dockers, pi-hole, grafana, zabbix, and a few other small things. The other one is for playing around and testing.

If you want it to look nice, check out Neatpatch.

We are building a 1 story. We left the space created by the stairwell when your add the 2nd floor and turned it into an ~84 sqft storage closet. We'll wire everything to there and insure I have space to stand behind whatever rack /shelving system we use so that I can monkey with wiring without pulling stuff out.

Don't forget UPS' in the closet. Might also consider putting the SANs behind a security door or hidden panel.

I'd outfit yourself with a good Unifi setup, cloud key, USG, WiFi hot spots, PoE switches, Unifi cameras, small server to run the Unifi NVR software (I run mine in an Intel NUC type computer). Oh and a Pi-Hole server.

flakrat said:

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Don't forget UPS' in the closet. Might also consider putting the SANs behind a security door or hidden panel.

I'd outfit yourself with a good Unifi setup, cloud key, USG, WiFi hot spots, PoE switches, Unifi cameras, small server to run the Unifi NVR software (I run mine in an Intel NUC type computer). Oh and a Pi-Hole server.

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If just setting up the UniFi NVR software, consider that their NVR device is decent, inexpensive and plug and play. With about 20 cameras we had on it, recording on motion, -10 seconds and + 10 seconds, we got about 6 weeks of recording capability, and that was on the previous 500GB version. New one is $365 and is 2TB.

That plus a RasPi setup for the Pi-Hole software and you're in under $450 on that total.

The Fife said:

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Cable Modem
Wireless router
Receiver
Media center PC
Gaming PC
XBox
XBox 360
XBox One
PS2
PS3
Modded PS2
Wii
Wii U
GameCube
CD player
Tape Deck
Turntable
VCR (I dub the occasional family movie)
System selector for game systems that use component/composite
Couple thousand movies, games, and CDs

Pre-HDMI systems are moving to the game room once that gets going, along with their games. That should free up a lot of space. It's a little tight in there right now.

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You forgot your parenthetical explanation for the Tape Deck.

I have cassette tapes of stuff that was never offered on CD. i find the occassional tape at a used record store of something I like and don't have. Most of the important stuff gets digitized sooner or later. But it is still a useful machine.

Sort of what 91AggieLawyer said, except it's stuff I bought on LP that I dubbed over instead of rebuying. I still have the turntables (and a microphone!) but they aren't hooked up right now. Neither one of them has a plinth that looks very good, but they also aren't the kind of thing I want our toddler playing with and there's no room in the media closet.

Craig James' son.