Equipment Racks

It may sound trivial, as functionality is paramount, but don't dismiss the importance of appearance. When you bring the CEO of one your customers through your facility to help seal a large deal, racks made of kiln-dried two-by-fours and plywood won't inspire confidence.

And buying all your racks from a single vendor may be your best bet: You can use extra mounting hardware from new racks elsewhere; cabinets will be all the same size; and you can apply the lessons learned from previous rack installations to new ones.

Functional and Secure

Best practices dictate that, in addition to a limited-access data center, rack fronts and backs should be restricted to authorized personnel. If you select a rack with removable side panels, make sure there is a lock or other mechanism to secure those panels. Troublemakers with a mind to kick out cables or power-off servers may be deterred if denied access to the machines. If your IT infrastructure is too small to justify a dedicated server room, a locking equipment rack may suffice.

For added security, you can buy a sensor to monitor the doors, temperature, humidity and voltage conditions in each rack. For the rack that has everything, we like NetBotz RackBotz and WallBotz sensors. We tested the WallBotz a year ago (see "NetBotz WallBotz 400 Is the Next Best Thing to Being There") and found it so efficient for room monitoring that we use one in our NWC Inc. lab (see our NetBotz monitoring system in action at inc.networkcomputing.com).Investigate the rack's power-distribution system. Unsightly and unsafe six-plug power strips from Wal-Mart wire-tied to the back of your racks aren't going to impress the fire inspector or a perspective customer. An emerging trend coming from telecommunications technology is the use of DC-driven devices at 24 or 48 volts. Server vendors offer these options, and smart companies are using them to provide a single power system for all their data-center devices. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, make sure your current racks can take such an upgrade without ugly third-party hacks.You can simplify power distribution by going with the vendor's recommendation. Must each rack be plugged into a single power source? Can you split the sources? Do your racks need to be hardwired, or can you daisy-chain them? What brand of UPS do the racks work with by default? Although you can force most configurations to work, a bad decision can mean a nightmare of incompatible thread designs and off-center holes.

And beware of the cable demon (go to our previous Last Mile to see a particularly menacing mess of wires). Most cable demons are not as unstoppable as the one we show, but you should be sure the racks you purchase have cable-management provisions, such as cable ducting, cable tie points and cross-rack ducting.

Accessorize!

The humble wheel deserves consideration. How mobile must your racks be? Even an occasional rack move makes wheels mandatory. You have to be careful, however, when loading rolling racks. The wheels should be lockable or have some other stopping mechanism. In addition, heavier equipment up top could make the rack tip, putting you and your staff in danger.

Heat buildup is a big deal in rack environments, especially with 1U servers. Dense storage arrays and blade servers add heat as well. You'll almost always need tools for keeping your racks cool. Look at air-distribution units, such as those from American Power Conversion (which also manufactures racks), that mount to the bottom of the rack and force air from the floor up the front of the rack to provide additional cooling.Finally, there are all kinds of toys you can add to your rack. One of my favorites is the 1U console drawer with a 15-inch LCD monitor, laptop-style keyboard and eraser-head pointer, touchpad or trackball. Also consider keeping a small supply of extra cable guides and power guides on hand. When you're installing additional equipment down the road, not having these at the ready can delay the process or lead to kludged cable installations.

Associate Technology Editor Steven J. Schuchart Jr. covers storage and servers for Network Computing. Write to him at [email protected].

Before you buy, consider the following:

1) Will you need environmental protection against dust, humidity and heat?

2) For security, will you need solid or opaque doors with sensors, or will access locks suffice?

3) How will you manage power distribution? Will you need UPS compliance? What about cable management? Do your requirements include individual power sources for each rack?For details and prices on specific Rack makes and models, use our Interactive Buyer's Guide Charts.