Recently I’ve been stressing about not being able to mount servers anytime soon, due to the crazy prices rails cost in Australia… Things weren’t looking good.
However, after visiting Reddit and posting up an ad on /r/homelab sales, I was contacted by a fellow labber in the US who was selling Dell R610 rails for a much more wallet friendly price! When compared to the going rate of 100+ AUD for a set, this was by far the best option yet.
The issue…
After I finally decided how many servers I was going to end up using (which was 6 if you haven’t read other posts… Which you should!), I realised this was going to be costly… So I sat on it for a bit and finally decided it needed to be done.
However, sending 6 sets of rapid rails, isn’t going to be the cheapest option, but still very likely cheaper than buying locally.
I had requested dimensions and weight for packing for the 6 rails to get a quote from my freight forwarding service as the seller only posted to US, which is understandable!
Luckily for both of us, it seems that the seller has been crazy busy over the last few days and didn’t get a chance to sort this out. Well at least I hope I didn’t waste any of his time by letting him know not to worry any more! He did give no indication that I had so I hope I didn’t, but sorry if I did mate.
The solution…
Tuesday I received an alert email from the auction place I purchased the servers from, there’s another dell R610 up for sale!
It’s the one I wanted originally… But didn’t meet the reserve for, so I’ll pass on this! However a little text with no display picture caught my eye. It said ‘pallet of server rails’.
After clicking into the listing there was one picture, but the rails were not easy to make out, they did look like R610 rails… The fact I’d recently purchased 11 R610’s from this place also made me feel they might very likely be what I needed.
I called and asked and was advised one was labelled with R610, as they mostly looked the same, I’d decided that was it.. I had to commit, gotta risk it sometimes.
2 hours before the auction ended, I was holding the winning bid on this auction with no reserve at a measly $13 AUD! I was ecstatic, I spoke with my girlfriend about the fact I’d found these and I was willing to spend up to $200. Whilst displeased as we have our holiday in 13 days and I keep spending, she knows for the most part I’m not an idiot so I went for it!
The doubt begins…
1 hour before the auction ended, the original bidder pumped the price past my $200 mark… On the way home I worked out in my head the best way to justify increasing my bid and how I’d not be at a loss by willing to push and push the price up to win…
I set my limit, my final limit.. Walked out of my office, as I found myself there clicking refresh for the last 15 minutes of the auction…
However, as my daughter was more interested in everything except daddy, I found myself spending the last 5 mins refreshing the auction on my phone haha.
Auction ends, I won, 10 dollars under my limit… I spent heaps more than I really wanted too and risked a good chunk of dollars on an educated guess that what I had here was what I needed. And would be worth the money… In case you were wondering, it was.
I drove there first thing this morning and collected my newest junk pile, once home it was clear. I did good again… I’m not too bad at this auction thing!
The outcome;
I am now the owner of 11 sets of rapid rails for Dell R610’s (the same count as the amount of servers I got from the same place, funny how that works hey…) & 2 sets of rails for IBM x3550s. Also some projector mounts I’m hoping to make a few dollars on.
Anyway, that’s the end of my story today, server room build resumes to tomorrow. Hopefully when I get back from Japan it will be in a state where I can mount servers. Let the good times begin!
