Home Datacenter 2.0
Yesterday afternoon I had a throbbing broken tooth, so I needed both liquor and a distraction, and since it was afternoon, I only had one of the two. So I set about the task of reorganizing my rag-tag fugitive fleet of home brewed crap (Home Datacenter 1.0) to the new, streamlined, mostly-built-by-professionals Data Center 2.0.
After plugging everything in, I flashed back to the thing that I did to kill some harddisks last year - I accidentally turned off power instead of flipping the house to the backup system to exercise it. Ooops. And I looked at my cool Vtrak 15200 and my cool Dell 1850, both with cool redundant power supplies and I thought - perfect, both power supplies lose power simultaneously when something goes amuck. So when I took my boys out on "boys day out" today, we stopped by "Best Buy" (after all, Full Retail is the Best Buy! 
) and picked up two APC Back-UPS XS 1500's, which can support up to 865 watts. I had one already, but it was old, and I figured I would use it in a less critical spot. Of course, one of the two I bought had a defective battery, so I am using the old one while I figure out when I am going to get time to go back to Best Buy.
I split the load - each UPS has one of the power supplies of the Vtrak and Dell, and then I divvied up the miscellaneous crud (two switches, 2 Buffalo TeraStations, and the monitor) evenly. Now I can get struck by lightning (which is my luck, by the way) and survive. Turn the house power off by accident? No problem. Trip the circuit (happened at least 4 or 5 times since we moved here, there is one outlet by the bathroom in the basement that is tied to the same circuit as my Home Datacenter)? No problem. Have a UPS fail (had that happen last year too)? Only a minor problem, as one of the switches will go offline.
Home Datacenter 2.0 is finally done being tinkered with (well, I still haven't found an automated replication/backup system I like, but that is it. Oh, and I should use a rack instead of a wicker basket and a Virginia ham box. But then really, that is it. Except for I am down to 1.3 terabytes out of 4.8, so I am likely to need more storage. Hopefully the 1.3 TB will hold out until tax refund time next year). I get to spend the next few hours doing other things for a change - like enjoying my broken tooth (but luckily it is after 5 so I can add liquor to the mix ). Now that my tax refund is spent, its back to being an I.T. lightweight - maybe I'll get to buy a new phone or something soon.