Looking for mini-itx rackmount cases...

[Bill McGonigle]

On Sep 1, 2008, at 15:28, H. Kurth Bemis wrote:

> Has anyone seen mini-itx or other SBC cases that would hold two or  
> maybe
> three systems in 1u or  2u?  Even a blade-like configuration would OK,
> though higher density then I really need at this point.

Frank pointed you to the good one.  Make sure your MiniITX port  
arrangement will fit in the 1U case - some with second rows can be  
tricky.

> Also thinking about power consumption with this project.  Should I be
> looking at DC only gear and setup?

Depends mostly on your site.  DC is more efficient, but after  
recently being involved with a project that was going to be at a colo  
with DC-power only, I can say it's darn near impossible to get COTS  
products with DC power supplies these days.  There are some, but the  
choice is very narrow.

That said, most Mini-ITX boards will run fine with a 12V power  
supply.  It's good if you're on a generator or batteries.

> I'm building out a small high-security network and wish to use  
> multiple,
> yet separate firewalls for structure.  Three or four at this point,  
> but
> could scale up to 5 or 6.  I'd rather not shell out $$ for elcheapo
> boxen that I have to replace every year, plus I have a closet the size
> of well....a small closet.

I went down this road too and turned back.  Make sure you can answer  
the question, "what do you do when one of the firewalls fails,"  
appropriately.  In my general use case it involved downtime to take  
out the 1U rack and replace the failed half, so I'm now using side-by- 
side MiniITX units I build.

-Bill

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