I’ll have space for a rack in 2028. To prepare, this is a shortlist of things I might want to get for it. Everything should be rackable for convenience.
Enclosed 42U Rack Cabinet
TODO
Rackmountable UPS
TODo, probably something with a 2000W rating?
Power Distribution Unit
One with reporting features. E.g, power consumption from each socket
Switches
Probably 2-3 switches:
- Main 100GBE switch with RoCe support
- 2.5GBE switch for management or low speed devices that don’t need higher bandwidth
Must be configurable via code, no GUI only configuration.
Not sure which layer 3 features I would need.
Fibre
Bend-insensitive single-mode fibre. I’ll get around to writing down the specific type of fibre when its nearer time to buy.
NICs
Must have SR-IOV, RoCe / DMA support.
Direct Attached Copper
This will depend on which switches and network cards I get
Cases
At least 3 cases for a minimal Kubernetes cluster. Possibly one more for a backup server.
Enterprise SSDs
Decide on whether to use U.2 or E1.s form factor SSDs.
- Solidigm D7-PS1010
- Optane P5801X (a man can dream)
CPU
- At least 32 core Zen 6 Venice CPU for main node
- 2 smaller Epyc CPUs for secondary machines in the cluster
Memory
Lets pray that the AI bubble would have popped by then. ECC memory only.
Motherboard
Server-class motherboard with IPMI.
LLM Inference
Again, lets hope that the AI bubble would have burst by then.
Fans
This isn’t going to be in my bedroom, but it can’t be too loud either.
Wi-fi Access Point
Proper AP, not a router with wi-fi features. Need to figure out which vendor has a good record of providing updates, consumer class devices are really bad for this.
Firewall appliance
Not sure how useful this would be. Maybe I just need an excuse to learn PfSense?