Pictures of my home built server cabinet

My daughter and I put together a homemade server rack out of 2x4s and plywood.  Probably cost us more than a cheap prebuilt, but it was fun.

My "excuse" for doing this was to reduce the noise level of my office.  It helped - but not quite enough.  You'll see below the hacky method I used to further reduce it.

Credit to: https://tombuildsstuff.blogspot.com/2014/02/diy-server-rack-plans.html for the guide - though I tweaked it a bit.

Still some work to do on it - I want to add a back door, put a shield on the exhaust fan, and, maybe, stain it.  But it's very functional as is.

And here it is with all my gear.  From top to bottom:

• RJ-45 patch panel
• UDM Pro router and switch (10GB and 1GB ports)
• Rocinante - my storage server
• Servpocalypse - ESXi hypervisor

At the back, I have:

• KVM - Keyboard/Video/Mouse: a switcher for interacting with the server consoles
• You can see the back of the UDM Pro and then there is Roci and Servpo again
• At the bottom is a rather under-powered UPS

I'd also like to add a rack mount PDU at some point.

DB levels were improved but I brought them down further by re-purposing the packaging for several of my devices.

Cardboard boxes make for decent sound insulation!  Just have to be careful not to block the airflow.

Here you can see the filter on the front of the cabinet:

Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of the cost of the project (didn't want to know) but here's my estimated total costs:

• Around $300 to $400 for the wood, screws, filter, metal rack posts, hinges, and blank plates for proper airflow
• About $80 for Servpo's rails (already had Roci's)
• Maybe another $100 for the KVM and patch panel

Already had the keyboard and mouse, monitor, UDM Pro, UPS, and cables.