I’ve decided that the bathtub is no longer a suitable place to work on the computer. It becomes more and more uncomfortable the longer I am in there, not to mention the lack of room to spread out papers and such. I’m sure it’s also not very good on the laptop being exposed to so much humidity, sitting on a board over steaming water.

So I’ve decided my christmas present to myself will be a functional computer room…

My “computer room” now has become mostly a wasteland. I have all of 5 active servers now, of which I plan to keep only 3, mabe 4. As compared to the original 10 servers I had before.

I need to keep the security DVR, but I plan to move it into a new faster box with more storage and possibly replace some of the hardware that has been failing.

I will also be keeping the VOIP server, which now runs 100% of both my home and business phone systems as well as provides my mother in California a seperate phone line, direct link to call me and free long distance to call her web store and eBay auction customers if she needs.

The only “server” in addition to that will be a secondary DNS (tertiary actually) and Mail server for SSA h0st, my webhosting business. As I still have DSL from both SBC and Covad (Through Speakeasy) networks, I may add an additional web/mail/dns server on the other network, as another backup, or just for testing/debugging/whatever.

In the future I plan to get a Media Center PC - and will most likely use NAS for it, but that’s a ways down the line. Right now, I just want to turn this wasteland into a neat and orderly, usable and functional work area for Jamie and myself as well as an organized rack of in-use servers rather than 2 racks of machines, half of which are currently turned off!

So here’s what it looks like now…

I have a fairly decent desktop PC that I never use, so I ordered a dual output video card for it and 2 19” monitors and arms so I will have plenty of physical as well as virtual desktop to work with. My current 17” monitor will replace Jamie’s old CRT, and whenever he’s ready to buy a monitor he’ll get a smaller 15” or so and I’ll use that for the KVM on the servers – don’t need anything big.

I plan to get rid of the big bakers rack and rickety table I have junk sitting on now and get myself a new desk. The current box I have my computer on will go in the corner for the KVM from the servers to sit on. I think it will be much nicer once it’s all done, so stick around and see how it turns out!