Prior to moving into our new house, during renovations, I had requested a slew of CAT5e cable to be dropped in all the rooms, and brought back to a centralized location to serve as my server/network room.  I really wanted to do things right and rack mount my equipment.

Well I don't have alot of rack equipment to justify a purchase of a full out rack, so I decided to look at the DIY route. Researching, I came across this blog on building a rack out of 2x4's.  Seemed easy enough, and the rack rails and a 1U shelf didn't seem too expensive....that was until I added in shipping costs...a set of rails and shelf would have set me back about $100.  Too much.

A little disheartened but not dejected, I continued researching until I came across a little wonder called the LACKRack.  Basically it is taking a cheap table purchased from Ikea, called the LACK table, and mounting rack gear between its legs.  How did this all start?  Well rumour has it a small company named GOOGLE, wanted an economical way of mounting their servers and rack gear...and someone discovered that the leg space of the LACK table is exactly the proper spacing of an actual rack.

The tables are cheap...currently $13+tax (CDN) at the local Ikea store.  For my project, I ended up buying 2 black ones.  I also bought 3 pieces of 3/4"x3/4" "Alexandria" angle purchased from Home Depot, as well as various screws to put it all together.  To finish it off, I bought 4 used heavy duty castors from an audio/visual media store on clearance...what I paid for the 4, was cheaper than had I bought  just one from Home Depot....great deal.

There are lots of LACKRack designs on the internet, but for mine, I wanted enough space to put my UnRAID server and another computer on the bottom, then above those, mount my network switch (1U), a small 5 port GigLAN switch, and a 4U patch panel.  So I mounted the two tables, one upside down, so the leg ends were butted together.  The anglebar is used to "splint" the legs, with enough leftover for creating a shelving mount for the D-Link 24-port network switch.

Space prior to the start of building the LACKrack and setting up the home network:

Original Buffalo Router (shown in above pic) was replaced with a Netgear Nighthawk and now more recently with an ASUS RT-AX88U.

Main switch has been updated from a 10/100 base DLink DES-1024R+ to a Netgear GS324 24 port GigLan.

The white ASUS GX-D1051 has now been replaced with a Trendnet TEG-S82g 8 port GigLan, but with the ASUS RT-AX88U router being 8 ports, the Trendnet is used elsewhere and is not positioned on the LACKRack anymore.

And down on the bottom of the rack is Spielberg (on left) UnRAID server, and the newly added Grohl (right) OMV server.

To finish it off, the equipment is powered via an APC Back-UPS Pro 1000VA, that primarily protects the servers, and properly shuts both down in a timely manner.  Spielberg is the primary, and Grohl communicates via NUT plugin.

(Pictures below, prior to UPS and router upgrades)

Some changes have occured from the above photo.  As mentioned, the ASUS RT-AX88U is the main router.  And with its 8-port GigLAN switch, I've reconfigured the network, and was able to remove the Trendnet TEG-S82g 8-port GigLAN switch from this point.  It now serves as a switch for the garage and some additional ports for experimenting.

Here is the most recent randition of the LACKRack build:

As mentioned, my network design is rather simple.  All LAN drops in the house fall back to this central location.  Our internet provider is a wholesaler of the cable company in our area.  The modem is located by the electrical panel where the COAX cable enters the house.  Then a LAN cable is fed back to the router WAN port.

From there using the routers switch (8 ports) and the 24-port switch, network communication is provided to the entire house.  Most rooms have at least 2 drops, others such as the Family room, or office have multiple drops to be as versatile as possible.

Though I'm a strong believer that nothing beats a hard-wire connection, in security, privacy, speed, and robustness, the ASUS router does a tremendous job in providing the entire house with both 5G and 2G WIFI with guest options.  With the router on the ground floor, its 5G WIFI covers the entire house, where the previous Netgear Nighthawk would flounder on the WIFI (especially the 5G signal) when up in the bedrooms on the second floor.

The Nighthawk is still in service though, and provides an additional access point to aid in extending the WIFI coverage out to the yard.  An additional TP-LINK router from years past also serves as an additional 2G access point.