Today was maintenance day in my tiny datacenter—also known as “that noisy metal box in the corner that my wife calls the space heater.” I pulled all three servers out of the rack, cracked them open, and swapped their classic HDDs for some smaller but faster SSDs. Yes, I know—storage downgrade, speed upgrade. Sometimes you gotta sacrifice terabytes to appease the speed gods.
But first things first: cleaning.
Armed with the holy tool of all DIY nerds—the hairdryer of my wife (obviously set to Cold Air mode, I’m reckless, not stupid)—I stepped onto the terrace and blasted those server guts like I was exorcising the Dust Demons of 2024.
I expected a full-scale insect cemetery inside. Seriously, after a year of uptime I was ready to meet the United Federation of Dead Flies. But nope: it looked almost brand new. Either the airflow in my rack is stronger than I thought, or the flies in my house have become smarter and avoid anything that hums at 5,000 RPM.
SSD Upgrade: Less Heat, Less Power, More Speed
With the SSD upgrade I’m hoping for lower power consumption and less heat. My rack had been running six HDDs before… basically a tiny sauna with Ethernet ports.
Speaking of heat: one of my long-time regrets is that, when building the house, I didn’t convince the local electrician to install a better rack with active cooling. Now the upper section of the rack reaches almost 30°C inside. For a homelab that’s still survivable, but hey—cooler is always better. And besides, hardware running hot is just hardware planning its future rebellion.
Dust Filters, Gaffa Tape & Questionable Life Choices
I also removed the fly screen from the perforated rack door and replaced it with thin PC dust filters, taped on with the most important tool of any sysadmin: Gaffa tape.
Tinfoil hat? No.
Gaffa tape? Always.
I’m hoping this will reduce the dust ingress even further. Temperature impact? We’ll see. And honestly—I’m not even sure whether I need all three servers running 24/7. Maybe I’ll consolidate… maybe I’ll procrastinate… maybe I’ll just stare at them and whisper “soon™”.
Between Dust-Pocalypse and Thermal Meltdown
This whole dilemma has annoyed me for weeks:
- Rack closed → less dust, more heat
- Rack open → more airflow, more dust
Basically choosing between dust-pocalypse and thermal meltdown. And just when I think I’ve found a balance… my wife comes along and shakes laundry nearby, unleashing a dust storm straight into my homelab ecosystem.
Thanks, climate change.
Next Steps: OS Reinstalls and Distro Philosophy
In the next days I’ll reinstall the operating systems and restore the data. I’m leaning toward returning to good old Debian—but I’ll think about it. I’ve got time.
(At least until I need to blow the dust out again next year.)
