Server racks find themselves, like iMacs and remote control Christmas lights, at the geeky junction of technology and style. Or at least, they can do. Little else has the potential to both lift the spirits, or to sadden the heart like a server rack.

We’ve collected some of our favourite server rack / server room pictures for you.

The Good

A couple of our favourite, well-organised set-ups first.

In 2007, the London Stock Exchange reported they could handle 4,200 orders per second. This photo shows their test/dev server room. The photographer, JonnieW@lker says “The real thing has cameras on tripods and to get in you need 2 signed authorisations in order to gain access (only allowed after 6:00 pm)“

This rack, somewhere in California, gets our vote for its well tidied cables, and a bonus point for emitting just the right amount of blue glow. Good find, Kim Scarborough!

The Bad

Free Geek volunteers repurpose old computers for people that wouldn’t be able to afford them otherwise. Thanks to Skippy13, we can now the FreeGeek server room as well. We’re going to have a whip-round and donate some cable-ties to them.

Richard explains that the configuration in this test lab changes on a daily basis, though it seems to remain in permanent Spaghetti Hell. Concerningly, it seems that this photo was taken after the lab was cleaned up. Woah.

It looks like this used to be a server room. Maybe? To be fair, their looming and cable-tidying looked pretty top notch, but we can only imagine that there may have been heat dissipation issues. No hints from Silfverduk, except that it seems to be in Pripyat, Ukraine.

The Funky

A bonus server set-up to finish:

These are the servers for a web service called Backrub. The wiring leaves clearly needs a bit of work, but we particularly like the SCSI drive box built from plastic bricks.

It’s great that the guys who bult it had time to enjoy themselves, whilst building up the service which would later be renamed ‘Google.’

If you find your server is living in Spaghetti Hell, you should talk to us about IT Support. We promise not to take incriminating photos!