RPi test rack for AAG test and build.

RPi tower up and running
Final build running 5 RPi’s

We are using the Raspberry Pi for monitoring our internal infrastructure and building out various images that can be used by customers to set up and monitor their own infrastructure. This means we need to have a number of them set up and running for our CD/CI process using GitLab so that when we add new features and monitors, we are able to build the new images and test very quickly. We found that this quickly became a nightmare to manage, especially as we started to add the RPi5 builds to the existing RPi4 builds.

The RPi is a very small foot print on its own, but once you start to add KVM switches, network switches and monitors it quickly became a rats nest of cabling! The cables took up more bench space than the RPi’s and trying to figure out which cable when to which endpoint became very difficult. Being able to buy different length cables eased the problem a little but we still found it became difficult to remember which cable went to which Rpi, monitor, switch port etc.

Lots of Pi's and cables
Cables everywhere

Having some young blood around with engineering skills I do not possess came in handy with a very neat solution to package everything into a single stack. Charlie took on the challenge and using his engineering skills came up with a 3D printed rack that can hold up to 5 RPi’s with the KVM, power pack and network switch all built in. He even added trays that could support either of the RPi’s that we use (they have different port layouts so the trays had to be modified to allow either type to be used.) and put fans in front to keep everything running cool. Even added some nice covers which look pretty neat with the Shield Advanced Solutions Logo.

Shield Logo view
Logo printed on side

We are still facing some challenges with the power management but having everything neatly stacked and proper cable management means we are not unplugging the wrong cables when we are making changes to the setup. We have also removed a number of RPi’s that were scattered around the server room along with the KVM switches and monitors so everything is a lot easier to find and manage. Definitely a worthwhile project and great result from Charlie (he even added screw inserts for the fasteners to make it easy to add/remove modules without stripping the plastic holes).

We are using the RPi extensively for testing our AAG product, we also run web servers and DNS on the RPi for our internal network, with the new RPi 5 there is so much more power available we don’t even push the CPU’s or get things hot enough to really need the cooling, but its pretty cool to look at the fans running on the front.

If you are interested in seeing a demo of the AAG solution running on either RPi or VM with Nagios (our own core build or Nagios XI) let us know, the performance of the IBM i checks is the best you will see, no copy and paste of commands from the IBM i to the Nagios environment, everything is configured in Nagios with ease and simplicity.

Be in touch.

Chris…

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