Cabling
Now that you have your monitors, workstations, and peripherals all set up, it is time to run the cabling. While this doesn’t souond like it is going to be much of an issue initially, it can become one very quickly if you do not plan ahead.
USB Cabling
Most people’s idea of USB cabling can be summed up as “Find an open port and plug it in!”. This philosophy works, in general, but we are looking at running the USB cabling as efficiently as possible. We do not want to compromise the USB subsystem by over using some ports and underusing others.
My general rule of thumb is to plug as many peripherals into the USB ports on the workstation as possible. This way, there is a limited amount of shared USB bandwidth. Each device, monitor hub, DVD drive, media reader, etc. should have their own dedicated port on the workstation.
When you are adding new devices to the system via the monitor hubs, spread them around. Don’t plug three devices in to one hub and leave the other empty. You are just forcing the system to share bandwidth.
Power Cabling
Like USB cabling, power is typically a haphazard process. Find an open power port and plug it in. But, this can cause all kinds of problems with your system.
In this diagram, there are a number of power issues:
- There is a single point of failure. If someone turns off the one powerbar or the breaker goes, you could easily find yourself losing data or causing your systems to fry.
- Workstation susceptible to power failure. There is no way for the computer systems to stay up in case of a power failure and this could cause data loss and hardware failure.
- Power circuit could easily be overloaded. There should be no more than 50% power load on a single power circuit. You can determine the amount of power load you can put on a specific circuit by adding up all of the wattages required for each device on a circuit and then divide that by the voltage in your area. If this number is more than half the amperage of your circuit breaker, you are overloading the circuit.
For example, if your computers are each 500 W and each of your monitors is 100 W plus 100 W for the DVD and media drives, you would be using (500 × 2) + (400 × 4) + (100 × 2) = 2800 W. If you are on a 110 V system (most of North America is), your amperage usage would be 2800 ÷ 110 ≈ 25.5 A. Your circuit breaker would need to be rated for at least 25.5 × 2 = 51 A. - Power is unfiltered. During times when there are power fluxuations such as voltage spikes and brownouts, your systems are unprotected. This leaves them at risk to damage, especially since the electronic components are very delicate to voltage changes.
In order to aleviate some of these issues, I recommend a formula similar to the following:
This is not the absolute ultimate in power cabling but it does resolve several issues.
- Each computer is on their own UPS. This will allow for the UPS systems to detect if there is a power outage and gently bring the system down. It should be noted that the primary monitor for each system is also on a UPS but the power for the monitor should be turned off when not in use. This will allow you to easily turn on the monitor during a power outage and perform any emergency procedured prior to the system shutting down.
- All powerbars and UPS systems filter the power to the other systems. This way, if a power spike or brownout hits your home or office, it will not affect your electronic systems.
- Using multiple power circuits. This reduces the load on individual circuits and eliminates single points of failure.
- Keeping drives off system power circuits. Drives produce a usage spike when they spin up and this can cause damage to other systems on the same circuit.
Other Cabling
The rest of the cabling can come next. How this is implemented has less effect on the performance of your system but there are a few things to consider.
- Don’t kink your cables. This only reduces the lifespan of your cables and can cause data problems.
- Don’t run power and non-power cables together. If you need to cross power and non-power cables, make sure they are at a 90° angle. If they must be run parallel, make sure they are at least 12 inches a part.
- Keep things neat. Messy cables tend to get stepped on or tripped over. You may want to consider something like this for cable management.
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February 19th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
So my question is how well does Synergy work with Beryl and AIGLX? My desktops are Windows XP and Ubuntu… so I haven’t tried Synergy yet.
February 19th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
ChamPro: It should work fine at Synergy works independent of the desktop interface and hooks into the mouse, keyboard and clipboard. I have two Synergy setups, one at home and one at work.
My home is Ubuntu Edgy with Beryl/Nvidia/OpenGL(Desktop) with Ubuntu Feisty (laptop) and it works lovely.
February 19th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
I’ve used synergy with ubuntu (but not beryl) I would expect it to work as faultlessly as described in this article.
February 19th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
If you use Windows in the main computer you can also use WIN2VNC. It’s a VNC client that works like Synergy but you can connect to whatever other machine that has a VNC server installed. Ideal if your other machines already have VNC server running. Everything works fine, any OS is ok, because it only needs a VNC install.
Anyway, Synergy is superior, IMHO.
February 22nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
That’s real cool. I assume each computer needs a dedicated local IP?
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:35 pm
This is very interesting. Pardon my ignorance, but what type of connection cable is needed between the pc’s then?
And once its hooked up, its just a matter of using the synergy software?
Thanks.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Thank you so much. If I set up USA operations, you´ll be someone I have to look up. I´ve seldom seen such an intelligent and thought through description with added information and exactly what I was looking for (I have several KVM´s). Great job! Since I´m in Germany it´s hard for me to buy you a cup of coffee. If I have a project in the USA I´ll be happy to ask you to join in.