Other Necessities

Some other things I had on hand that are useful in building out the Dramble:

  • Cat 5e or Cat 6 network cable for making patch cords. (I have hundreds of feet of the stuff, and can quickly punch down a patch cable, so I just made my own). If you can't make your own, a 10-pack of 6" Cat6 cables is a little over $10 on Amazon.
  • TRENDnet RJ-45 crimper (for crimping ends of the patch cords).
  • A power outlet. (I am planning on adding an inline UPS at some point in the future, and could run the cluster off this for a few minutes at least… so the power outlet is somewhat optional :)
  • A computer to run the Ansible playbooks (you can do it all on the Pis themselves, but I prefer working on my Mac workstation and leaving all the Pis headless).