Turning A Basement Into A Big Linux Server Room

This week I posted about my new server room, where there's Linux benchmarks constantly happening on the Linux kernel and other open-source code via the Phoronix Test Suite and Phoromatic. With many Phoronix readers having been interested in the basement makeover I did to turn a ugly, boring basement into a clean server room, here's more details and pictures on the month-long renovation along with various tips and product recommendations from the experience. This server room is now almost up to 50 systems and is complete with a drink bar and projector. There's plenty of pictures and details for those hoping to build their own personal basement server room, including a few tips for increasing the wife acceptance factor of the big project.

About a month and a half ago the basement, which largely just served as a storage room for computers and other business boxes since buying the house, looked like this:

Now after a lot of hard work by my wife and I, it looks like:

We gutted everything of the former basement, added insulation, upgraded the electrical, drywalled, etc. Fatima and I did everything ourselves (I've been doing construction work as a passion long before even starting Phoronix) aside from adding of the electrical work.

Here's another comparison...

It was a lot of work, but certainly worth it in the end.

It's also much better than the previous make-shift server farm assembled in a spare bed room when having setup the LinuxBenchmarking.com environment some months ago.

On the following pages are more of the details on turning an empty basement into a high-end server room, which also doubles as a work area when doing open-source benchmark development work as well as a meeting place when dealing with Phoronix vendors/partners and PTS Commercial customers.