[underground]

Can anyone answer this one - would rackmount equipment operate outside the rack, or does it receive its power etc. from the rack / cabinet it is intended to live inside?

[slackline]

Can anyone answer this one - would rackmount equipment operate outside the rack, or does it receive its power etc. from the rack / cabinet it is intended to live inside?

The rack just holds it in place, you could conceivably have the hardware sat on the floor, but you'd run into problems of over heating.  Cabling is independent of the rack itself (at least in the server racks I've encountered).

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Rack mount kit is powered by standard 'kettle' lead power. Some cabinets have built in power in the form of 6/8/10 gang strips inside the cabinet. Some also have fans etc built in. All rack mount kit can be used outside a rack with the exception of things like the patch panels which are really just a fascia.

Rack mount kit varies from the 20cm deep switches to 100cm deep servers so it can be cumbersome outside a cabinet. The height of cabinets is measured in 'U's, one 'U' equals 1.5inches, and covers two bolt holes. Switches are normally 1U, servers normally 2U, sometimes bigger. UPS normally 3-4U or bigger.

[Lund]

It depends on what it is... if it's something as simple as a blade then it'll be fine; if it's something more complicated like a telecoms switch then you'll probably struggle.

How much power does it use?  Does it have a PSU, or does it just have breakers and take the power from the rack or some other element?  How much cooling does it use, and what's the airflow like?  (Usually it's front to back and you'd need enough clearance and cooling wherever you put it).  How noisy is it - can you stand the fan noise outside of a machine room?

Fundamentally though, most racks are pretty simple - a scaffold with stuff to make your life easier like cable mounts and the like...

[Adam Lincoln]

Depending on the server, it may be considerably more noisy.

[Tris]

Rack mount kit is powered by standard 'kettle' lead power. Some cabinets have built in power in the form of 6/8/10 gang strips inside the cabinet. Some also have fans etc built in. All rack mount kit can be used outside a rack with the exception of things like the patch panels which are really just a fascia.

Rack mount kit varies from the 20cm deep switches to 100cm deep servers so it can be cumbersome outside a cabinet. The height of cabinets is measured in 'U's, one 'U' equals 1.5inches, and covers two bolt holes. Switches are normally 1U, servers normally 2U, sometimes bigger. UPS normally 3-4U or bigger.

Sorry but most of what you said is complete bollocks.

Racks come in all different shapes and sizes (heights, widths, depths). Generally you rack one type of kit in it's own rack, for example Sun servers & storage etc are usually 19" wide, Intel kit is generally now standardised as 23" wide therefore you cannot have a rack which holds both of these kit types together.

You can't say servers are normally 2u in size. This is like saying cars are usually red. Most modern servers are 1u in size or below (such as blades). Manufacturers tend to go small as rack space (to rent) is very expensive. In our main data centre, about 250 of the servers are 1u or below in size, 100 are 2u and about 50 or so of the others are 3u or above. Some of the main Sun/AIX servers are 16u in size.

Also, rackmount UPS units can range from 1u to whatever depending on your power requirements.

To the OP:

Any kit that you have in a rack can be used outside of it. One of the rack's main purposes is for people to combine multiple equipment items to save space and facilitate maintenance, rack kit (apart from when the rack is being transported) is usually moveable on rails so the server or whatever can be slid out to replace a part. If the kit is stacked on top of each other on the floor and a CPU blows in the bottom server, then obviously you have to take everything off from above it to get to it.

As servers/kit are generally racked on top of each other, then the heat issue is no different to if you stack them on the floor. If you stick stuff straight onto carpet then you may have issues. In an ideal world, servers would be racked with a min 1u gap between them for air flow/heat dissipation but this normally doesn't happen - see rack cost comment above. I have found that UPS units produce more heat through their upper/lower casings than servers as most server fans are quite effective.

A lot of older Cisco kit and Legacy servers/storage may not have standard IEC power leads, however these power connections can be modified quite easily to a standard 3 pin plug if you don't have a UPS (and UPS cables came with the kit).

Hope this helps, for reference we have a load of servers/switches/storage/ups units which are just sitting on the floor out of racks in the DEV areas.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Rack mount kit is powered by standard 'kettle' lead power. Some cabinets have built in power in the form of 6/8/10 gang strips inside the cabinet. Some also have fans etc built in. All rack mount kit can be used outside a rack with the exception of things like the patch panels which are really just a fascia.

Rack mount kit varies from the 20cm deep switches to 100cm deep servers so it can be cumbersome outside a cabinet. The height of cabinets is measured in 'U's, one 'U' equals 1.5inches, and covers two bolt holes. Switches are normally 1U, servers normally 2U, sometimes bigger. UPS normally 3-4U or bigger.

Sorry but most of what you said is complete bollocks.

That's a bit harsh Tris, notice how I said 'normally' 2U, anyway exactly which bits are 'complete bollocks', you seen to confirm my observations of our server and hub rooms. Can't say I've worked in a data centre or used any SUN/AIX kit. Mainly we use Dell/Cisco/HP kit.

[Tris]

Sorry Obi-Wan, you are right - it was a bit harsh. I must have been having a bad day

Apologies..