geerlingguy/mini-rack

Project MINI RACK is a guide for miniature rack builds, for compact Homelabs, RF battlestations, and portable network racks. Watch the video announcing this project by clicking the image below:

This site is maintained by Jeff Geerling, who lives in the US. Sadly, mini rack gear is often only available in specific regions. For example, many vendors sell only in the UK or parts of Europe. So this site is mainly focused on gear I'm able to acquire, living in the US. That doesn't mean its scope can't broaden over time, though.

Some links on this site are affiliate links—I earn for qualifying purchases. These links help fund the ongoing maintenance of this project :)

Table of Contents

• Community
• The 10" Mini Rack Standard
• Hardware
  • 10" Mini Racks
  • PDUs
  • UPSes
  • Patch Panels
  • Network Gear
  • Other Gear
  • 3D Printable mini rack systems
  • Mini PC/Server Shelves
  • SBC Shelves
  • Disk Shelves
  • Shelves and Blanking Panels
• Cable Management
• Build Showcase
• Software
• License

The 10" Mini Rack Standard

There is no worldwide 'standard' published for what constitutes a "mini rack". However, most of the industry has settled on the same '1U' height standard as typical 19" racks (44.45mm, or 1.75"), but with the width being 236.525mm (9.312") between screw holes. This equates to an absolute maximum of around 220mm (8.75") of horizontal clearance.

Image source: Wikipedia.

Allowing for extra tolerance, mini rack gear should fit within around 210mm (8.45") of horizontal space, and mounting holes should be able to accomodate a few mm of width to either side.

For screws, some manufacturers forego threads and use square holes for cage nuts, while others use standard 10/32 or 12/24 screws. Screw or square holes must follow the same vertical spacing as the 19" rack specification.

See issue #29 for more discussion around mini rack dimensions.

Community

Visit Project MINI RACK Issues to discuss your own mini rack builds, ask for help finding a particular piece of equipment, or to share your experience.

Issues are categorized:

• help me find: for help finding a particular piece of equipment
• build showcase: for complete or nearly-complete builds, to show off your stuff to the world!
• website issues: for problems with this website

Besides this site, check out Reddit's r/minilab for discussion about about mini racks and the broader topic of mini homelabs (which may or may not incorporate a rack).

Hardware

10" Mini Racks

At the center of every mini rack is a 10" or 'half-width' rack. A typical rack is 19" wide, but half-racks fit in more places. There are only a few manufacturers of mini racks, currently, and availability varies by country.

PDUs (Power Distribution Units)

Every device in a rack needs power. If it's not provided by a PoE switch, it has to come from somewhere! A PDU, or Power Distribution Unit, takes one power source (usually AC wall power) and lets you plug multiple devices into it—whether through DC 12V adapters, USB-C, or AC outlets.

Some PDUs can be remotely managed, other PDUs are basically rack-mountable surge protectors. And yet others distribute power with more panache.

Note: Some small PoE switches also have PoE+ or PoE++ power input, such as the Ubiquiti USW-Ultra. Assuming you are in a location with another PoE++ switch, and everything is PoE-powered, you could power everything off one Ethernet cable, and bypass the need for a PDU or UPS in the mini rack!

Ongoing discussions:

• Find the perfect 1U 10" Mini Rack PDU

UPSes (Uninterruptible Power Supplies)

UPSes, or Uninterruptable Power Supplies, offer protection against brownouts or power loss, and usually have better power protection circuits as well.

Mini Rack UPSes

• APC Slim BV400XU (requires 2U of height, may be too wide for some racks)
• Goal Zero Sherpa 100 AC (requires USB-C PD 60W+ input and rack shelf)
• Tripp Lite 600VA 300W UPS - BC600R (fits within the bottom of a RackMate, see this issue)
• Vertiv Liebert PowerUPS 100 Lithium Ion UPS (rated for 350VA/210W, fits in bottom of some mini racks, see this comment)

Ongoing discussions:

• Find the perfect 1U 10" Mini Rack UPS

Device-specific UPSes

• PiSugar 3 Plus 5000 mAh Pi model B UPS (rack mounting can be tricky, requires one per Raspberry Pi, only supplies 3A at 5V)
• Geekworm X1200 5V UPS HAT for Pi 5 (rack mounting can be tricky)
• Waveshare UPS Module 3S for SBCs (rack mounting can be tricky)

Patch Panels

Patch panels help organize a mess of RJ45 network cables, USB, HDMI, Coax, or whatever other signals you'd like to pass through from the back to the front. Often mounted just above or below a switch for a tidy install.

Network Gear

The heart of every homelab is a network switch or router. There aren't a lot of switches that can natively mount in a 10" rack, but every year a couple new 'half rack' models are introduced.

In this section, gear will be split between devices which natively mount in a 10" rack (e.g. with hard-mounted rack ears), and devices which can fit in a 10" rack but require a shelf or 3D printed mounting adapter.

Rack-mountable Network Gear

Note: Some switches intended for full-width rack mount ears may work in a 10" rack with 'universal' rack ears, like the Pelopy Adjustable Universal Rack Mount Ear Kit.

Some manufacturers require special kits for 10" rack compatibility:

• Mikrotik offers the RMK-2/10 kit for full 10" compatibility
• QNAP offers the SP-EAR-QSWHALFRACK-01, though you may need to buy two kits to get a short ear for each side!
  • There's also a set of 3D Printable rack ears for QNAP 10" devices
• Pelopy offers a Universal Rack Mount Ear Kit for many vendors—however fitment can be tricky...

See Issue #2: Find a perfect way to mount small switches into mini racks for more discussion around this topic.

Network Gear that fits on a 10" shelf

• D-Link DGS-108 8x 1 Gbps Unmanaged Switch
• GiGaPlus GP-S100-0500T 5x 10G Unmanaged Switch
• Netgear 8-port Unmanaged Gigabit Switch GS308
• Netgear GS110EMX 8x 1 Gbps 2x 10G Managed Switch
• Real HD 8-port 2.5G Unmanaged Switch with 10G SFP+ Uplink SW8-25G
• TRENDnet TEG-S762 4x 2.5G 2x 2.5/5/10G Unmanaged Switch
• Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 10X 10-port Managed Switch
• Ubiquiti USW-Flex-XG 4+1 10GbE Managed Switch
• Ubiquiti USW-Ultra 42W 8-port Managed PoE Switch
• Zyxel GS1100-16 1 Gbps Unmanaged Switch
• Many 4, 5, 6, or 8 port cheap PoE/1 Gbps switches (too many to list...)

Note: Many of these switches have 3D printable ears on Printables, Thingiverse, etc.

Other Gear

Sometimes there are interesting things that don't fit into any other category.

3D Printable mini rack systems

Some makers have created entire mini rack 'systems', where you 3D print a faceplate (or cut it out of metal, like with SendCutSend), and insert different types of gear, like SBCs, SSDs, mini network switches, etc.

This section is for systems, not individual 3D printable parts. For parts like cable modem or mini switch mounts, please see the respective sections elsewhere.

• JaredC01's LabStack mini
• monkizzle's MiniRax system
• bwees' 3D Printable Mini Rack
• The Open Node Project - 3U 10" 3D Printable Rack
• Kev's Robots - 10" 3D Printable Mini Rack
• MandicReally's Mod10 3D 10" mini rack system
• Michael Klements' Lab Rax 10" mini rack system
• DeskPi 3D Print Models for Rackmate System
• Uptime Lab - Raspberry Pi Server Mark III
• Mauker's 10-inch rack mounts
• dalovering's fully 3D printable half-width server rack and trays
• jazwa's rackstack - modular 3D printable mini rack system
• Paul Grove's 3D Cube Rack
• axiopaladin's ButterflyRack - modular, 3D printed frame for metal rails
• Mauker1's Tiny-Rack 6" and 10" 3D Printable Rack Mount System
• MRP's 3D Printable 10" Mini Rack
• kellervater's HomeRacker System
• ilanKushnir's KWS Rack

Mini PC / Server Shelves

There are a variety of commercial options to mount Mini ITX motherboards (or SBC clusterboards, like the Turing Pi 2, or DeskPi Super6C!), or to mount Tiny/Mini/Micro PCs like a Lenovo M series computer.

• GeeekPi / DeskPi RackMate Mini ITX 1U shelf
• MyElectronics 10" 2U Mini ITX Short-Depth PC enclosure
• DeskPi RackMate 10" 2U Mini ITX shelf
• Parametric 10 inch Server Rack Mount (3D Printable)
• Raw Hardware R-CASE mITX 10"

SBC Shelves

SBCs, or Single Board Computers, are ideal for mini racks, due to their low power, thermal, and space requirements. You can often fit multiple SBCs per U of rack space, and there are many mini rack setups centered around an SBC cluster, or SBC routers or storage devices.

Disk Shelves

It can be difficult to adapt storage devices (especially full 3.5" hard drives!) into a mini rack, but there are always solutions—sometimes as simple as placing a 2-bay NAS on its side, or putting an entire 4-bay NAS on a shelf!

• GeeekPi / DeskPi RackMate SBC Shelf (can hard-mount two 2.5" HDDs side by side)
• 10" Rack Hard Drive Mount (can hard-mount two 3.5" drives)
• Raw Hardware 6 x HDD Holder

Shelves and Blanking Panels

Not all gear can be mounted on rack rails. And not every U of space needs to be filled. Often, a device needs extra room above or below for cooling or for an accessory that sticks out. In these cases, you can employ a rack shelf or blanking panels.

Cable Management

Mini racks can quickly turn from beauty into beast, once you start plugging things into each other! Larger racks usually have areas where cables can be routed for a tidy finish and easy maintenance, but mini racks often don't have room. So you can add on accessories to tidy up unsightly cable messes.

Build showcase

I'm not the first person to build a mini rack. In fact, the mini-homelab community's been thriving for years! Check out Reddit r/minilab for some extra inspiration, or click through some of the builds below! Pictured below is an AREDN (Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network) deployable half-rack built by @cameronzucker!

If you would like your mini rack added to this list, please open a new issue, add the build showcase label, and document your build! Once it is complete(ish), we can add it to this list:

Browse all issues tagged 'build showcase' (includes in-progress builds).

Software

There's a ton of things you can do in a Homelab—and many of them run perfectly fine on mini PCs or SBCs in a mini rack!

Here's a collection of cluster-related projects that may be a good test or starting point for your own rack, if you need the inspiration:

• Pi Cluster - Build a K3s cluster with 3 or more SBCs
• Pi Hosted - Docker and Portainer-based Pi hosting
• Top500 Benchmark - Benchmark your cluster with HPL (High Performance Linpack)

License

GPLv3 or later

Open Source Repository

This website is generated from the geerlingguy/mini-rack GitHub repository.

Author

Jeff Geerling