Moving a rack of computers into a Sardine can
Challenge
Like many others in IT, I keep a lab environment at home where I can try out ideas without the cost of company down time. Let’s face it, I have a hobby I get paid for! Anyways, my Microsoft Active Directory installation was on a pair of SuperMicro 1U machines. They were loud, consumed a lot of power and created quite a bit of heat too. Something was going to have to go but I really needed to have the lab machines.
After introducing my employer to virtualization, I needed to find a way to bring it home. I had rolled out VMWare to 30 grocery stores and did a “Physical to Virtual” (P2V) conversion on 20+ machines in the data center so this was not going to be a problem in the home lab.
My main problem was going to be finding a quiet host with low heat output.…