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Building Rackmount Cabinet for Home Use?
Timothy M. Schumann asks: "I am trying to build a small rack mount cabinet for my family to help with the clutter of our home network. I don't want to purchase a rack or cabinet pre-manufactured; I would like to build my own. However, I have been unable to find a list of physical specifications that racks and cabinets must conform to when built, so I was wondering if any Slashdot readers could help me find such information? Just for a frame of reference, I'm looking for something along the same detail level as the BTX form factor specs that can be found here. Any input on cost effective hardware choices for rack mountable UPSs, switches and/or cases is also welcome." This topic was originally discussed some two years ago, and while there was some useful information was presented, the basic question wasn't really answered. If you were going to try and build a custom rackmount enclosure for yourself (or someone else), how would you go about doing it?
Just throw all your boxes under a desk with 6 monitors on top like me.
404
That's what closets are for.
In the music industry it is done all the time- just buy the rails and bolt them to the enclosure of your choosing. It aint rocket science!
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
Just build a wooden frame. Then use #10 wood screws.
Wrap with some nice finishing wood, stain, put on varathane, and you have a nice cutom cabinet.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
I have a small area for doing a rackmount in. I do not need 60 1u boxes. Just enough room for about 5 2U (gives room for air). By having the material, it would be possible to build a small one that fits the enclosure.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I would begin by measuring the equipment I intend to house. Kind of like shoes....
They are around $75 to $150 instead of cabinets which tend to be $250 - $750. As long as you have a place where you can bolt it down to the floor that's well air conditioned, you should be good to go. It's the same functionality, (holds 19" rackmount gear goodness) just not enclosed.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Not why custom build a cabinet, but why, if you are _custom_ building a cabinet would you care about "physical specifications that racks and cabinets must conform to"? I find this confusing. Isn't the point just to build what you need for the equipment you have??? But I could be wrong...I have a history of missing the point of these things.
1.75 (1U) x 19.0 x 16.63/20.0
Our old office used a cupboard for rackmount hubs.
If you are not going to be taking anything out of the "cabinet" too often, you could probably get away with this, and just put 2 bits of wood 19" apart so you can screw your kit directly into these...
If you do want to take things out (as I would) it would be nice to find some metal sheets with the appropriate holes drilled - they must exist - dunno where you could buy them though...
Remember rear access (no pun) but I spend as much time behind my cabinet rewiring this and that as I do in front.
For some reason rack mount gear other than networking kit is usually about twice the price of its non rack mount equivalent - take switch boxes (KVM?) and UPS's in particular - even server rack mount kits tend to be a few hundred quid - and all you get is a few brackets and perhaps some rails...
Hence I tend to go eith shelves in my cabinets - the advantages of rack mount, but cheaper!
Some day you are going to want to move. Buy an Anvil or equivalent case on eBay with rack rails pre-installed, and wheels.
They sell the rails at various sizes, all you have to do is build the box and attach the rails. Pretty good prices too.
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http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&User
If you're just looking for screw specs, this ought to do it.
More on Google
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...specifically sound guys. They've been putting effects and amps in home-made 19' cabinets for decades. You can make it out of wood yourself. (Shielding is for wussies - the units inside are in their own enclosures)
Find good, sturdy wood 1/2 to 1 inch thick, make 4 sides of a box: top, bottom and sides. Front and back should be open. The INSIDE distance between the sides should be just a bit over 19 inch. The box should be however deep as your biggest unit (of course) plus some extra for plugs and cables.
Now comes the trick: on the inside sides put two vertical bits of wood 2 inch wide, 1/2 to 1 inch thick, flat on the sides 1 inch recessed from the front running top to bottom. This is where you'll screw in your equipment. Make sure to use nylon washers so as not to scratch your euipment.
Done.
I went to IKEA and bought a cheap-o entertainment cabinet. Nice black finish, smoke glass door on the front, and cheaper than I could have bought the parts for to build my own.
I never installed the castors, and as that puts the bottom right on the floor it easily handles the weight of my large UPS. The only problem is no rails, but I've put everything on shelves... it's only for home, after all.
If you want a 19" rack, you can buy rails and build them into your own housing. Try Middle Atlantic products from your favorite video supply retailer, such as this one (no affiliation). Buy the screws there too, to make sure you get the right size.
Try here for reasonably-priced rackmount rails. They aren't really quite proper for computers, though.
I also have a catalog from Hammond Manufacturing which sells racks piece-by-piece, including rail sets. Their catalog shows a lot of detailed schematics for their racks, as well. You can get a catalog free from their web site.
I use a couple old HP half-height racks (really using only 1 right now, 1 more sitting around). They aren't deep enough for proper cases, though, so I use shallow cases for now.
I'm planning to do the same thing as you, at some point. I've considered some $300 racks off eBay and the normal $250 shipping, but I'd rather build a nice wood-exterior cabinet that would look good in the home. Besides, I need something that is closer to 'normal' specs than the racks I have now. Rack hardware: I'd stick to eBay. Shelves, blank panels, etc. are all much cheaper that way. I also bought a rackmount APC UPS--look for one WITHOUT batteries, and shop around online for replacements. You will pay less for shipping all around, and the batteries are usually crap anyway, unless it's a trustworthy seller who says they put new batteries in it. For cable management, I prefer a simple lacer bar, unless you really have a ton of equipment. Of course, if I had money, I'd get rails and cable management arms...but I was doing good to buy the rackmount cases, as the rest was (mostly) free for me. For rackmount computer cases, I've used Case Outlet for a while. They barely speak English, but they resale decent cases at decent prices. If you are using any kind of multi-drive enclosure or removeable drive racks, be sure to gett the DEEP cases! You can also try KRI Computer for rackmount equipment. I've never bought from them before, but I've heard good things about them, and they have good prices and a good selection. Welcome to the world of Ultimate Geekdom!
How you going to handle heat and air cirulation. I see some of these answers about closets and cabinets and can just feel the heat build up. Telco racks are cheap and offer lots of air circulation. Have deep servers that need front and back mounting then use two telco racks. We mounts Suns that way all the time. If telco racks are to tall they are easy to cut down, but there are also lots of accessories for them like shelves, keyboard drawers, cable management guides, and etc. Plus easy to take apart and move it necessary.
There are a few primary concerns with building your own rackmount box.
1) Accessability - an area where many commercial rackmounts flop, let alone a home-build.
2) Temperature - when you pack 4 dual-processing Athlons into a small box, you have quite a room heater. Not only does the rackmount itself need to be ventilated, but the cooling needs of the room it's in need to be considered.
3) Appearance - is it going to sit in your living room? Or, is functionality the primary concern?
4) Power and bandwidth - How are you going to plug it all in? If appearance is an issue, what about all that ugly cat5 cabling?
5) Resources - what tools do you have? Are you like me, armed with a 1'x1'x3' toolbox filled with cheap handtools, a circular saw, and a drill, or do you have a garage full of table saws, lathes, and routers?
6) Cleanliness - I've seen a rackmounted system run 24x7 in a hosting facility for 2 years and at the end not have any noticable amount of dust. I've also seen my kids' computer downstairs accumulate over 1/2" of dust on the CPU heatsink. If the box will sit in your home, you have to account for any dust in the house. I'd recommend two boxes in your unit. A small one on the bottom, with a filter on the very bottom letting air in, and fans on the top pushing the filtered air up into the server cavity. Then, at the top of the server cavity, on the sides, have the ventilation holes that let the heated air out.
7) Dimensions - there are basically two kinds of racks. 19" used by servers, and a larger size (22'? 23'?) used for telecommunications. You can get brackets to convert the bigger to the smaller.
I assume that you have a server or two, or you wouldn't be bringing it up. Really, I wouldn't consider making my own unless I enjoyed making wooden-ish boxes or had some special need or decor to match up with. You can get a decent half-size rack on ebay for a few hundred.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Good article on building racks. It's musical equipment oriented, but all the same principles apply:Shavano music - constructing a rack
This space for rent.
If you don't want a full relay rack/cabinet, lots of companies sell 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 size rack/cabinets with or without wheels, doors, wall mount, etc.
Unless your time is worth next to nothing, it will be cheaper to buy.
And if you don't need a 19" rack, many shelving units do a fine job and look nicer in a home environment.
The relevant standard he's looking for is
IEC 60297-1 Ed. 3.0, 1986. You may have to
pay a nominal fee to get it though.
When I was in university I went to the monthly surplus sales racks were available pretty often and for low prices. I could have gotten racks for as low as $10 canadian. The old DEC ones looked pretty good too. I don't see why you should have to make racks.
Gil
-- Where ever you go, don't complain, you went there!
It wasn't for computer equipment but for audio equipment. It's all standard 19" equipment though. I bought my 19" rack rails at Musician's Friend and then built a plywood box around them to house the equipment. They are quite sturdy and should perform to what you need. In our rack, we had about 100-150 pounds of equipment in our 8U rack and it holds up great! Good luck!
ikeya
---- Move SIG...For great justice!
It could be sold with the house as a built-in feature. Who knows, if you sold it to a geek it could be the closer....
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Those relay rack are complete crap when it comes to housing anything that weighs more than a pound or two. My boss once ordered these thinking they were a great way to save money. So we have two full height relay racks housing a 2U power bar, terminal concentrator (4U), some modems (2U) and a switch (1U) while friggin' servers sit on the floor. Yeah, good move.
These things are good for telco and telco-type infrastructure. Other than that, they are garbage. Garbage!
And they use a different sized screw than everything else we have (10-32). It may be because they're Hubble, who knows.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
For the next version I'll be trying to find a lighter metal and DEFINATELY buy some rack stripping rather than drilling holes in the frame to attach kit, as this really doesn't work well. I'd also think more about how to mount the power sockets which was trickyer than I thought and how to get cold cathodes into it without snapping them all this time :)
One U is an inch and 7/8 ths. The width is 19 inches (483mm) I cann't remember the distance from mounting hole to mounting hole but is easy enough to measure. As mentioned in a previous post get hold of some steel racking strip. This is a steel strip folded into an S profile but with right angle corners and punched out with square holes at the right pitch. Most major electronic / electrical suppliers will carry M6 (in Europe 1/4 inch in the US ???) captive nuts that will mate with the square holes in the strip and let you mount your hardware, assuming its got mounting ears. If it hasn't rack mount shelves are available. If the hardware is heavy think about building support at the back. Remember to think about access to the back and ventilation. To get hold of the rack strip try a professional audio supplier or a flight case manufacturer.
if you build in enough room to have 2U spaces near heat-sensitive items, there are rackmount fans available that are great for getting air to the whole rack. I can't find them now, but check with a large audio vendor like Full Compass. other than the specs posted above, it doesn't seem that there is that much more to know. For computers, in the interest of further airflow support, it would be very wise to port the sides of the cabinet (assuming you are using some solid material) or even use an iron mesh instead. I think that would be reasonably attractive, surrounded by wood frame.
This doesn't work, half the time- for one thing, if the equipment is too heavy/long, you'll damage the case/rack by mounting it incorrectly(and few cases have provisions for mounting near the center of gravity).
This is especially dangerous with aluminum relay racks- you can strip the screws out just trying to get the stuff mounted; the second the guy in back lets go, the bottom screws go "BBRT!" and the bottom slams to the ground, while the tops of the rack ears are now horribly deformed.
Relay racks are only for patch panels, wire management, and SHORT depth equipment(like routers, switches, hubs).
This is a good question to ask before you buy colo space- "are my servers going to be in enclosures, or relay racks?" If they say "relay racks", run away, don't come back- clowns at work. Almost all servers need proper support- ie, front AND back mounting. Preferably with rails.
Please help metamoderate.
...remember that all the holes aren't evenly spaced! Measure before you tap the holes (unless you're screwing into wood, in which case you're golden).
Here's a good way to build a rack cheap. Rent a van and go to the local computer surplus place, and find an old Sun Sparc Storage array (e.g. SSA-100) enclosure. These are 3/4 height cabinets with pull-out fronts.
Next, remove all the disks (1 GB SCA) and sell them on eBay for a buck a piece of whatever you can get. The SSA will probably come with about a hundred disks. Now you've recouped a good hunk of your investment.
Now, if you don't have 220 service in your building, you'll want to rip out all the power shit. No sweat. Take one of the thin covers from the back which is 19" long and vertically mounted. Mounted it horizontally at the back of the enclosure, and zip tie a power bar to it.
Next, got a 110->220 step-up transformer for cheap at the hardware store. Wire the fans up to that (the fans are great). If they are noisy, try bending them a bit.
Now, you'll all done. It'll hold any rackmount equipment you could possible want, and will look decent. As the front comes off in sections (instead of a door) you can easily pull them and paint them at your leisure.
Cheers,
Wes
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
It's worth remembering that steel or aluminum cases lose quite a lot of heat through the walls while wooden boxes are insulators, so commercial cases are more tolerant of poor thermal design.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Head over to http://www.hammondmfg.com/ and find a product like what you want (the rack, the case, a shelf, whatever).
Then get the diagram for it, includes all the dimensions you need. Then just build your case according to that...
Theres not enough air flow in a closet to keep your equipment cool. Enclosed racks need to have big fans to keep the air moving.
I hate those damned things, too.
/etc/default/kbd.conf or somethng like that under Solaris.
Pick up a surplus terminal server like a WTI CMS-16 or Computer PowerRack off eBay. They are almost free these days. Then configure all your equipement to use serial consoles (particularly easy if you are using Sun or DEC Alpha, equipment, not too bad for LILO-loading systems either).
Just remember to enable the alternate break sequence if you are running Sun hardware and using the Computone product (or any other concentrator which isn't "break safe"). I think it's in
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
An easier alternative (but less "pro") is to look for Unistrut or "rack/shelving" strut at your local hardware or home center. It usually comes in 6-foot lengths, and has a series of holes and slots pre-punched.
C|N>K
Caged nuts are usually sold with 10-32 screws in the 'states; UNF, I think. M6 nuts are nice for heavier equipment (A5200, E450..) and the cage holes will be the same size.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
High strength corners + right angle pre-drilled members and you've got all the customiziablity you need. MUCH cheaper then buying a pre-fab rack, plus lots of geek factor.
In fact, they even make shelving to make a rack/workstation combo. Awesome toys. I don't work for them, I just ran across their booth at comdex.
rackframe.com
I just completed my own homebrew rack, and although it wasn't exactly done cheaply I did research most of the Diy options. The most promising solution I found was using bedframe rails to rack your equipment. They're strong, cheap and readily available in custom lengths at places like Home Depot. They can be mounted to a number of framing materials. ITU standard holes are fairly easy to drill, but threading can be a problem. fortunately you can just drill oversized holes and use cheap clip-on racknuts to mount all of your equipment.
Good luck!
Put a nice quiet 100 cfm bathroom fan in the closet ceiling, exhaust any heat into your attic. For around $80.00-100.00 your heat is problem solved.
Is there a standard for rack depth? I need to rackmount a Compaq 5000, and I don't have the rails for it yet. This is all for a 4-post rack, of course.
--
lds
Are you going to make your own screws too? How about the cpu? Do you make your own clothes? Do you buy toothbrushes or do you make those yourself too?
You can get a good ready-made rack for $100 to $200. Why on earth would you want to spend more than $1000 of your time reinventing the wheel?
..but ended up finding a really good deal on an 18u rack on ebay instead. I can say that all you really need is the rails (which aren't as cheap as you'd think) and to make it easy you could bolt a rack appliance into them to get the exact space you need between them which is 19" between the outer edge of the rails from what I measure on my rack. You probably will need some kind of spacer between the rails and whatever they're bolted to, as you probably want some room to work with around the rails but all you really need is probably a few washers inbetween the screws and the rail. Anyway for the most part its quite easy. I picked up some rack shelves on ebay for real cheap and that completed the deal. Here's a picture rack.jpg
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
Get cabinets like mine - the easy part is getting the cabinets. The hard part is getting your significant other to agree to let them live in the living room. :)
:P
Do notice that I have a few shelves on the relay rack. The ServerIron (switch) is a bit heavy in the back, so I have a book shoved between it and the Sparc 5 directly below it.
The rack is also anchored to the wall.
I've always found that the weird "niche" wholesale-resale places end up with alot of outdated rackmount stuff that you can buy extremely cheaply, gut, and remount your own hardware. You know.. the type of places that still sell pallettes of sparc ipx's for about $100.00. In SF, there's that one place on 3rd street by the water. Anyhow, I guess a good analogy would be that they're "one step above industrial liquidators." Just go searching through your local warehouse district and walk into places with weird sounding names. Rack mount 386/486/P1 machines should be going for about $25-$30 a piece.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
Why would you want a rack for home use. Racks and rack gear really only became major space savers when you have a lot of gear. I don't know what you're doing with your home network but if you have more then webserver/mail server, PDC, NAS server, and one other misc box I would be really suprised. No I assume you either have a bunch of cheapy "workgroup" hubs and swiches which won't "rack" anyway or perhaps one good 24 port rackable swich. Then throw in a UPS or two. So at most you have like 8 things to put in the rack. That is not much and you will not see much if any space savings. Don't for get racking hardware takes up space too. Mid towers and AT formfactor computers stack well with no rack UPS usually don't need to be in a place where you can get at them so they can go behind the boxen and even the office max special of the week swichs have holes for wall mounting. You could safely put that much gear in most any room of your house with A/C.
The other thing to cosider is *alot* more engineering goes into rackable hardware vs. standalone and it shows in the price tag, goto dell.com and price comparable poweredge serves in rack/mini_tower configurations putting it into a 1U or 2U rack mount chasis adds $1000USD to the price. Your best bet for the home is a closet shelf system, you know the wire mesh kind so everything can breath, and standard hardware. It will allow you to stack things to the celing the same way a rack would take up less space itself and be avalible at Home Depot for a couple hundred bucks.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Your local telco store may help. You know, the place where they stock extra phone books, overpriced telephones, and try to sell you an overpriced cell phone plan. They sometimes have secondhand relay racks, or as I found, even full-sized server cabinets, for which they don't have a use. Ask for the person who buys commercial customer premises back office equipment.
I went to a bankruptcy auction and bought three Motorola telecomm cabinets for $1.50 (that's right, a dollar and a half). These are only about 60" high by 18" deep, so they're really just dressed up relay racks. I gave one to a client and kept the other two.
Adding rails to one of them was about $60. I ordered them through my local telephone company, because it was cheaper and better than buying angle iron, drilling holes, and threading them myself. I added wheels and some paint. My total expenditure was just over $100 per cabinet.
I also bought a used high-end server cabinet for a client from the local telco for about half the price of a new one.
Our local recycler has a division that deals with computer stuff. Anything computery they separate out and try to resell. The nice thing is, they sell it by the pound! I bought several rackmount cable management modules for about $20, less than the price of a single new one. They were just sitting in a pile on the ground. I cleaned them up, and they made a nice addition to my cheap server cabinet.
If you want to put your rack in a closet and maintain a reasonable temperature, you can buy a bathroom fan and thermostat for not much money. I think a nice quiet fan is about $75, but in a closet noise may not be an issue.
sigs, as if you care.
Because the house I live in is rented and I have limited resources, I came up with a rack that works for now. Base of 2x4 lumber with uprights of 2x8 lumber. You just screw right into the wood anywhere you want to hold your stuff. You get the flexibility of not having to screw in a particular place, and it's stable enough to hold most anything you might want.
Once I buy a house, I hope to get a real setup going, but this works for now and cost me next to nothing. I did provide the rack with its own 20A circuit from the board, which helps a lot since when a breaker throws it doesn't necessarily take down the rack as well.
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Is available from IHS Global here for $50.
The standard you seek is EIA RS-310-C: CABINETS, RACKS, PANELS, AND ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT.
I went with a simple 19" post and 1x2U 5x4U chassis. Here is a page with some of the info. My Home Rack Now please be nice to my bandwidth slashdot :-(
actually, for those of us in the Northeast, it would be cool to vent it out to an ajoining room to get some of that heat. Maybe something with a valve to choose between heating up the apartment above me in the summer and my apartment in the winter.
Hello. I was lucky enough to come upon a used rack that a company was throwing away. I am now in the process of building a rackmount server. By far, the hardest part was finding a case that was inexpensive and had enough hard drive bays for my needs. After much searching, I finally found the Antec line of rackmount cases:
http://www.antec-inc.com/us/pro_rackmounts.html
I think these are fairly new, because when I first started looking, no one had stock. I got my 4U22ATX400 off of Newegg.com and I love it. It is really heavy duty and sturdy. Plus, it has drive bays up the wazzo. Finally, despite its low price ($188), it has the features of a much more expensive case.
I understand the need for a cabinet and not wanting to spend a $1,000US for something that looks nice. Buy yourself an inexpensive cabinet from Wal Mart(under $100US). Then add a few metal rails (angle iron from an old bed frame), and drill the holes to fit your need. You can buy a tap and a few screw under $10US. You can get away with a project like this for around $200 and some time. You might even be able to teach the family how to drill and tap holes too!
It's all about RTFM.
... what exactly is it that you are trying to mount. The advice in the posts so far speak about heat and power concerns as well as industry standard dimensions. Whoa! You said "home".
So let's say (old gear scenario) a hub/switch, old PC as server, cable modem, T5 cable (you said "clutter" so one assumes no wifi); typical to home needs. Negligible heat, negligible power. So what the heck do you need even a "small rack" for?
Think: a cabinet rack must necessarily have a larger footprint than the existing gear it encloses. A cabinet will have all the same wiring clutter leading in and out of it. So it's unclear what you hope to gain.
If you want to make things look nice, mount the gear out of sight (closet, furnace room (my own set up)) or stick it in a piece of furniture (as many of the posts here suggest). Total cost can be zero.
Industry went to racks primarily to make use of vertical space for the large number of units typical of an industrial set up. Clutter is addressed with trunking, bundling, and raised flooring.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
http://mojo.servehttp.com:8282/guides/rack_cabinet /rackmount_cabinet.asp
guide for building rack
If you're in the UK, Studiospares supply all the bits you need to bolt rack gear into your own housing, such as rack strips of various heights, nuts and bolts, and pre-made cases & flightcases by Buster Cases.
Note their directions to get the right width between the rackstrips:
Or you could go for a Designer Rack, even if just for ideas :)
I was lucky to save a server cabinet from the skip at work. At the risk of Slashdotting myself... it's here.
Co-operation beats competition
I purchased a wire shelving unit on wheels from the Container Store. I keep the rack in my closet. When I need to get to the wiring, the entire unit rolls out. Total cost was about $150 US.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
No, I'm totally serious! Get a small relay rack for cable management if you must, but chances are you don't have much/any rackmount hardware anyway, and racks are pretty expensive/unnecessary for home use. Most home-use routers and switches have screw mounts on them so you can hang them on the wall and run them with staples to wherever they have to go. If you've got your heart set on rackmount systems, buy a music rack. They're often smaller and cheaper, but they're still not "cheap." Generally, with networking stuff, if you only need one rack, you can usually do without any. The only time you NEED rackmount stuff is large installations, i.e. you'd need 50 or 100 racks.
Check out Startech they have a nice wizard-like setup to help you pick out your rack. They make other cheap computer accessories too.
If you want to do it right, find someone who's already done it.
Joshua J. Kugler
The best, cheap way I ever found to organize servers and related gear were used food storage racks. They're usually stainless steel wire-type construction and come in a wide variety of sizes. Many are modular so you can set your own shelf height and many have locking wheels so you can move them around and lock them in place. They can be quite strong; I've wheeled coworkers around on them before. It's pretty easy to find places selling them because there are always restaurants starting up and going out of business. Look in the phone book for "Restaurant Supply".
I've got a couple of 4 foot wide by 6 foot tall racks at work. Bottom shelf contains computers, next shelf has a monitor, mouse, keyboard, next shelf has more computers, and the top shelf has power strips and switches. I set them up so one power cable and one ethernet cable come off the back corner so you can just wheel it wherever you need it and plug it in. All the cables are attached to the frame with plastic wire-ties so everything is kept neat. If you need to get to the back, you just swivel it around and there everything is.
Back when I had my own company, I ran all my servers off of a 6x6 rack that I had bought for $50 US. Money was tight, so I used all shapes and sizes of systems, mostly generic. I didn't need pricier rack mount units yet I still had portability and ease of access. I had up to eight servers, 3 monitors, hubs, and misc gear all over it.
At home, I've got a rack which holds three servers, a monitor/keyboard/mouse, a scanner, and two printers. Everything else in the house is wireless and talks to this unit. I paid $20 for the rack and wheels for it were another $5 US.
A rack is just a piece of anodized metal with some screw holes that are 19" apart. It's insane how much people spend on these things [$3000, $5000???].
In theory you could machine one yourself, but if you value your time at all, there's one and only one name you need to know in affordable racks: Middle Atlantic [aka DataTel].
All products here:
Very nice wall mounted rack series here: I've found that an excellent low cost supplier is Syndat, out of Oklahoma [and I'm on the east coast]: Even though they don't list all the Middle Atlantic parts on their website, they stock them.PS: DANGER, WILL ROBINSON: Never run a computer in a closet!!! FIRE HAZARD! FIRE HAZARD!
For less than $20: ClosetRack
I used ClosetMaid shelving from Home Depot.
I used this shelf.
And their adjustable ShelfTrack, although they have nothing on that page.
- The shelves are wire, and about 20" deep. Great for cooling.
- When you get the shelf, Home Depot will cut it to your width, in the store.
- The adjustable tracks are mounted onto a stud wall and you can raise and lower a shelf, as you see fit. All attachments are made on the back of the shelf so wiring can be run up the sides.
I've created a rack, desk and shelving by visiting my local street maintenance depot and talking them out of some of the "Unistrut"(?) posts that they use for street signs after they have been run over by some driver. The un-bent portions are 4 to 6 feet long and the maintenance guys seem to be glad to be rid of them. The posts are square tubing about 1 1/2", predrilled on all sides.
They (as well as many other pro-audio stores) sell metal brackets for mounting rack-mount audio hardware, mixers, effects processors, etc. The brackets run about $5-$20 per pair, depending on the height. They are L-shaped, and have plenty of mounting holes pre-drilled, plus threaded holes spaced perfectly for rack-mount devices, 1U apart.
Then head over to Home Depot and spend about $40 on some nice wood (probably something intended to be used for shelving), plus about $5-10 for hardware. (Screws, a few corner brackets for support, etc.) I don't know the size (how many U) you're planning for, but the smaller it is, the cheaper it is. (You'll need less wood, obviously.)
Your total cost will probably end up around $50-$60, assuming you already have tools, a drill, etc.
Although Racks are expensive to buy new, I've no
problems getting a rack for my or a friends home setup. Goverment or Office surplus stores will give
you a price 1/3 ish of the original. Best of all is to keep your eyes open and ask when an office building gets refirbished. Free is best price. People are more than happy for you to take that ugly rubbish out, after all it's only going to fill an
expensive skip otherwise!
If you can find a copy of Audio Systems Design and Installation by Philip Giddings (out of print, but maybe in a library?) it has some chapters dedicated to rack design, including the ISO (or was it ANSI?) spec. Don't have my copy handy right now, or I'd give you the standard number.
This sig intentionally left justified.
I ended up wall mounting an open-frame Swingline picked up on Ebay (while the frame is 19", it's designed to wallmount on studs 16" or 19" apart). I got some patch panels from Ebay as well, and some ordered direct from Leviton. The rack also houses a 32 port 100 Mb/s switch. Non-rackmountable hardware (DSL modem/router, and satellite multiswitch) were wallmounted on plywood panels.
The rack is mounted on the wall in the basement, with cabling access to the first floor, and access to the second floor is achieved via a Panduit raceway on the back wall of the attached garrage: the raceway ends at the wall between the garrage (close to it's peak) and an inside second story closet. From there it's s snap to route cables up to the attic and down each inside wall to modular and coax outlets.
One thing you want to watch for is that the rails are pre-threaded to accept machine screws. Otherwise you will need lots of nuts. The prethreading adds $$$ (as it isn't cheap to tap that many holes) but is well worth it.
You could've hired me.
actually, for those of us in the Northeast, it would be cool to vent it out to an ajoining room to get some of that heat.
Same thing up here in frigid Ottawa, Canada.
My servers and my main workstation are in the furnace room, adjacent to a cold air return duct on my forced-air furnace. Their heat is dragged out of the furnace room and distributed throughout the house.
I'm actually considering getting together about 30 computers to heat the house this winter. Given my furnace's estimated 70% efficiency and the cost of electricity ($0.043/kWh) and oil ($0.47/L), it's cheaper. I also calculated the heat output per unit of each fuel. I could just use baseboard heaters, but the electricity may as well do something useful (distributed clients?) on its way to becoming heat.
While my main workstation is in the furnace room, my home office is in an adjoining room. I simply put a small hole in the wall for the VGA, audio, keyboard, mouse and Palm cables. It's effectively silent in here now.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Arm yourself with a tape measure and visit someone with a "real" rack. That'll give you all the dimensions you'll need. Next get a pair of rackrails and some plywood. That's about all that's needed.
That's exactly what I did. I got the quietist bathroom fan I could afford, and an old electric base board thermostat. I took the thermostat and inverted the temperature element so it would come on when it got hot instead of cold. After a little fiddling with the setting I got it to come on at about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. On average the fan only runs about 10 minutes every hour, and keeps the closet temperature just fine. Total cost, about $65 US (not including the tools I already had). The only downside I can find to the set up is administrating the two servers in the closet. Most of the time I can ssh into either box, but if something goes wrong and I have to hook up a monitor it's a real pain. Other than that it's great.
In the music industry it is done all the time- just buy the rails and bolt them to the enclosure of your choosing. It aint rocket science!
That's right! Buy some rack rails. They should be available at large scrap metal yards, one can get used ones inexpensively.
Buy some tools. Absolutely required:
Measure, cut, drill. Use the mitre box and a level to make sure everything is straight, bolt the pieces together.
To make your own computer cases and rack-mount shelves, use sheet steel and/or sheet aluminum, and lots of small #6-32 machine screws and nuts to hold it all together. Buy a small sheet metal brake if you don't have one ($20-$40) so that you can make neat 90 degree bends. Pop rivets can be handy for stuff like holding the side braces onto your own shelves. I usually like to build things with machine screws and nuts. Once I've got all the sheet metal done, I either weld the seams or pop-rivet them, depending on what I need. Welds are very tough to cut, and pop-rivets have to be drilled out. Machine screws let you play with the design a little bit before making it final.
Sheet metal is dangerous to work with - it's sharp and little filings will get all over the place. A pair of good leather sheetmetal gloves will protect your hands.
Also, sheet steel comes coated with cosmolene or similar anti-corrosion coatings. You will need to wipe it off (a rag with rubbing alcohol usually works) before you spray-paint your finished cabinets. You need to paint the sheet steel (Tremclad is good for this) or else it will flash-rust in time.
If you're working with salvaged scrap steel (which I usually do), you will probably need to clean it. An angle grinder with a suitably-rated cup brush will do wonders. Remember to wear the safety glasses!
Measure twice, cut once! Take your time! This is no more difficult than carpentry.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
In addition to selling complete racks and cabinets, Middle Atlantic Products has parts you can use to make your own. They have some pretty details dimentional drawings of the cabinets they sell which should be good enough to base your own plans on. L
I used to work in a student union, where everything had to be moveable and secure, so we flight cased everything and mounted it with racking. The best company was probably Canford audio ( http://www.canford.co.uk/commerce/category_2001128 _2000087.aspx )
I lucked out. A friend of mine worked for a bank in the area, and knew of a branch closure. Everything "not needed" was up for auction.
We got a couple very comfy chairs for five bucks each, and I got a full height equipment case (plexi front door, perforated rear, dual exhaust fans, roller wheels, etc) for $20. Canadian.
Of course, moving the damn thing was another issue. It weighs in at close to 300 pounds.
Build Your Own Rack Cabinet Or, how to rack 'em and stack 'em for a third the price...
choice quote from this article
"NOTE: Due to TREMENDOUS bandwidth usage thanks to this article's sudden fame on sites like Overclockers.com and Slashdot (to the tune of 17 THOUSAND hits in 18 hours!), you may experience problems loading images. If you do, please load the individual images manually."
the article covers building a frame from both metal (welding required) or wood
Some of us can not or will not use wireless. I had to wire my parents house, since my mother has an older pacemaker. They say it should not interfere, but hell, I'm poor and can't afford to replace my mother!
My place is a clutter of wires because I am a jerk! I don't want the neighbors sniffing my packets. I do have a wireless nic in the laptop from work, and yes, I can connect to their unsecured AP.
I have used both relay racks and the closed cabinets. Relay racks will work for just about anything, deep servers can have the "ears" mid-mounted. Chatsworth also has heavy duty shelving. The only downside to the relay racks are the narrow base, and the possibility of tipping over. Bolting to a floor is probably not an option if you rent.
If anyone's interested I have a HP rack with wheels and side doors, front and back rackable, 14U is just right to fit under your desk if you don't have any drawers.. If anyone's interested email me at address below:
email at aaron mitti dot com
I built myself a rack cabinet for my music gear about a year and a half ago. I built it out of 1/2" Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF), which is a pretty good, reasonably strong, all-purpose, cheap, and very consistent (because it's made out of sawdust glued together, basically ). My boss, who is a former contractor, uses it all the time to make shelves at work. You can get 3/4", and sometimes even 1", if you are concerned about strength.
Then all you need to build the cabinet are: a circluar saw (table mount is best if you can get to one), some wood screws, and a drill. Plus, I guess, a tape measure.
There are really only three crucial issues: securing the corners somehow so the whole cabinet doesn't wobble back and forth, making sure the screws don't crack the MDF (which can happen very easily), and making sure the two sides are as close to parallel as possible, so that your equipment will fit in correctly all the way up and down the cabinet.
I solved the first by simply screwing a big piece of scrap MDF to the back bottom half of the cabinet. There are much more elegant ways to do it, and I am sure you can figure them out.
The second simply means that you have to drill all your screw holes before you put the screws in.
The third is the most difficult; I dealt with it by using corner clamps, and got lucky. Using a square in each corner would help, or you might be able to work something out using a level, if you have one.
Rack rails are available at big music stores (Guitar Center, e.g.); small ones should be able to order them. I'm sure Fry's has them, and MicroCenter too, but I've never actually looked.
The best way (I think) to attach the rails is with carriage bolts, and I didn't find that I needed washers (since there are so many bolts all the way down the rail). Rack screws are #10-32 machine screws (at least, that's what I use), and it's best to get short brass ones -- they go in easier.
Good luck!
My computer room is the bonus room in our house. Everything else is decorated or covered with kids toys. Right now it's my desktop and my router box. Already have a KVM to simplify. I have about 4 other computers I'm gonna bring on line soon (have a couple others, but the only use for them would be to play OLD games.
Obviously this one room get a bit warm in the summer, but stays okay in the winter. Any ideas on how to set something up to keep the machines - and the room - comfortable. I have access to the attic areas on all sides, and was thinking of putting a dryer vent from the back of the machines into the attic area as I've seen done elsewhere, but am also looking for other and better ideas.
What about a VGA extension lead? Only attach to it when you need to, and the rest of the time let it dangle - but you already thought of that, right?
*Still* negative function...
Personally, I'd never build my own, as it'd require a lot of precision drilling and tapping, and I'm just not set up for doing that sort of work in my shop.
What you're looking for is "EIA-310-D". Unfortunately, when I try to search for it, all I'm finding is companies quoting that their racks comply with the specifications.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I picked up a 51U Rittal 26" deep cabinet for well under a grand delivered to me.. it certainly took a lot less time and headache than building my own, which probably would have looked like ass given my lack of aptitude in a machine/woodworking shop...
As far as inexpensive rackmount hardware, unfortunaly simply adding the word "rackmount" to a product name doubles its price. Adding "XU" where X is a number 2 or less doubles it again.
I like Chenbro rackmount cases, but they're very expensive. Enlight makes a 5U/pedestal server case that sells for $128 (search pricewatch for 'enlight 8950') online w/o power supply. Be sure to get the rack kit (another $120).. see? double..
D-link makes a bunch of cheap rackmount switches.. see APC for UPSes.. but be prepared to pay...
Check out local music stores - musicians cabinets are the same 19" that industrial uses, but they're FAR less expensive. I think I saw a 28U cabinet for about $300 at a local store a while back.
it was a bitch to find but i have a copy of what i think is the proper spec.. it shows all tolerances and hole locations and is basically a "spec sheet" for the rackmount std...
email me at admin@brutallyfrank.net and ill send it out to you.
I'm told that inhaling the dust from it can cause cancer.
I bought a couple inexpensive racks like mucicians use that only had the fronts with no support for the back. These are great because I could bolt them into the concrete floor, and they're perfectly parallel, and they screws and spacing are the same as for computer gear. For my UPS, switches, and other small gear I just bolt in the front and I'm good to go. For servers with rails, I have some 2x4's at the back where I can use drywall screws to attach them. I do need to drill my own holes in the rails to make them fit, but it is cheap.
I made my office next to my storage room so the servers are in the storage room with nice heavy smoked glass doors in front of the racks. I ran mouse, keyboard, VGA Printer and a pile of cat5 cables through the wall when I built it so that I could run a KVM to control the servers from the office. Now I only have to worry about that stuff changing to USB or something before I have to run more cables. The storage room has a window in it, so when it is hot I just open the window and put a fan in the window... Cooling problem solved. I have about 8 servers, 2 switches, 2 routers, 1 large UPS and the KVM running in there with room to spare.
...or PDP-11 and put your stuff in there.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
I bought 4 16U predrilled and tapped rails on ebay for about $30. Then I build a wooden frame for the rails. I didn't enclose it yet. I used some existing rackmount equipment I had as a guide for spacing the rails.
KVM Switches are real useful, especially when you can now have the user station 100+ feet from the system.
Search the web for RETMA racks
Go to www.eia.org and find the spec for 19-inch racks
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Ya, you guessed it, that's just what I do. I have a 20 foot VGA cable that I snake around the corner to my monitor. I control both via a KVM switch and a wireless keyboard and mouse. So, it works, just not all the gracefully. What I would like to do is get a cheap old 10 inch or so LCD to put in the closet with the servers. Between that and the wireless keyboard I wouldn't have to run any cables. Even better yet would be a KVM over IP switch. However I'm poor and don't have the 200+ dollars to fix a problem I already have a solution for. Oh well, life goes on. Anyone have any better ideas?
If space is an issue, you can use a "telco frame", basically a standalone pair of heavy-duty standard rails with a flat base for floor mounting.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =3065317079&category=20316
A technician who is near and dear to me (my son, actually) happened to be standing by a substandard rack when it gave away under the stress of having an HP server pulled out in preparation for being worked on. "Collateral" damage included a dislocated shoulder, bruised ribs, and a knee injury. I've never been sure what, precisely, became of the rest of the equipment on the rack; the server in question was undamaged because its fall was cushioned.
In a true family room (kids, assorted household impedimenta, pets, whatever) I'd really think twice about building something. Our entire assortment of household networking equipment sits nicely on an open, table-high shelf from IKEA. If young 'uns presented a problem, the entire assortment could go on a higher shelf--of course with adequate weight towards the bottom.
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
There's no denying you're a hard-core geek when you build this sort of stuff for home...though I'm sure there are lots of people here who've gone much, much further. I wonder what the "Ultimate Computer Geeks Home" contains - anyone want to take a crack at the title?
any input on cost effective hardware choices for rack mountable...
Good luck. Most rack mountable equipment is targeted towards corporations, therefore, corporate sized budgets are required.
As an alternate proposition, try using your existing stand-alone machines and equipment but place them on a commercial metal shelving system. I've seen heavy duty (800lb capacity) wire-frame modular shelving in the sub $400 range that you could stack floor to celing with equipment.
Just a thought.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Rack mount hardware is made for business use. This means that the price is set by how much a business would be willing to pay for it. If there were a large demand for a consumer oriented rack mount solutions then you might be able to find less expensive rack mount hardware. As there is not a large consumer demand yet the prices are not likely to drop.
What are your requirements? Requirement examples would be; physical security (the kids keep hacking my hardware), floor space is at a premium (help, I live in a Manhattan apartment) or display (damn that looks slick). Rack mounts are not necessarily the right solution for the home or office or even the data center.
Do you like to be hands on with your computer/network hardware? I personally like to be able to take a machine down and rip into it on a workbench. Depending on your rack mount equipment that may be easy or it could become very difficult. In my experience it is usually the latter. (Think of how the dynamics of disconnecting plugs, accessing innards and lifting out hardware would actually work.)
Do you need a cabinet or will a stand do? If you have wall space available and your equipment is light/small you might consider a wall mount rack.
If you decide that you are going to go with a rack mount solution, these are my personal favorites:
Middle Atlantic - These guys have some really neat enclosures that are recording studio quality.
BUD Industries - Some of the lowest prices I have found.
MilesTek - Good selection of smaller rack mount solutions.
If you don't absolutely have to have a rack mount solution then my recommendation is a wire shelving unit and plenty of cable ties. You can come up with a good looking and highly effective bit of equipment. Here are some links:
Metro Shelving - The big kahuna of wire shelves. Great stuff but can be pricy.
Costco - Seville Classics Commercial Shelving unit and a bundle of cable ties from Costco is the best $70 solution I have found. (I have four of the shelving units and have no complaints.)
Dan
I built myself a rack cabinet for my music gear about a year and a half ago. I built it out of 1/2" Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF), which is a pretty good, reasonably strong, all-purpose, cheap, and very consistent (because it's made out of sawdust glued together, basically )
Oh yeah, it's a great material, except that it's flammable.
(One can, of course, make that same argument about iron and steel - ever light steel wool on fire?)
The chances of my computers catching fire are minimal, but sh*t does happen, and I kinda like having a roof over my head.
Besides, if you're going to the trouble of building the thing, you may as well do it in metal. If you've got the tools, it's really no more effort.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I bought a nice rack from the Army's dispo center. It had a 1970's reel to reel tape drive in it, but I just tossed that. Only cost me $15 to boot. Look around for places that are getting rid of old server room junk, and you can probably get a good rack for cheap/free.
There are 2 different kinds of mounting system: Rack's and 2 post racks.
2 post racks are primarly for mounting light telco or network gear and patch pannels on, and really aren't usefull for computers
Computer racks or 4 post racks come in many different shapes and sizes. They pretty much only have a couple standard features... 2 sets of 2 posts mounted 19" appart with a bounch of holes in them marked of in U's (1.25" or so if I remember). The distance between the posts depth wise vary greatly, and some have the back pair adjustable. Most racks have removable side pannels and doors.
As far as rackmount gear, add 25-100% onto the pricetag =-( Rackmount gear is pretty much non-consumer so they design it for higer reliability and higher cost for business. Keep you eye on E-bay and you can pick up some pretty nice rack accessories for reasonable cost.
When I look at the expenses of rack-mounted stuff, the racks aren't anywhere near as pricy as the cases. It seems far cheaper to me to buy cheap mini-towers and standard shelving than to get cases that can mount on racks. Anyone have luck making their own cases? Or know of a cheap source?
for about 60$ canadian, you will find 'garage type' metal racks ...
they're 6' high, 3' wide and 1.5' deep.
and have 5 shelves (you can set the height)...
i currently use the bottom shelf for 4 PCs ... nice fit ... 5 shelves = 20 boxes :P
you could even drill holes in a corner of each shelf to squeeze your cat5 and wires through ... and you can easily organize the wires with zip ties (pass them through holes in the structure)
while you're at it ... you could get some ply wood and make a complete enclosure and add those bathroom fans they talked about.
for 60$, ya cant really go wrong. hell i even have 2! they're avail at any renovation center (got mine at the building box)
cheers
Oooh.. don't exhaust heat into the atic. That's bad. Always cut it through to the roof. That air in your closet is going to be quite warm. As we learned in science back in middle school, warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. That is to say, when the warm moist closet air cools in your atic it's going to provide you with moisture problems. This is especially true with bathroom-mounted bathroom fans (since the air is likely at 100% humidity from the shower) but I'd definately run the closet fan through the ceiling, too, just to be on the safe side.
Although I'm venturing further off topic: In the old days they'd put a pan of coals to under the covers before going to bed (or for people who were sick.) Lately, I find my iBook gets my bed nice and toasty on these New England winter nights...!
I cam across a similar problem, and found many solutions. I was going to built my own rack, but was fortunate to get a hold of an old one. If you are going to build a cabinet first you need the rack rails. User dblittlea-w on e-mail sells quite a few different rails for cheap. This site has a good DIY areicle on how to build a rack cabinet. For guts I wanted a case that could hold a normal computer and normal power supply so I didn't have to buy an expensive PSU. A 2U (2 X 1 rack unit or 2 X 1.75") case is the smallest you can get in order to use a regular PSU. I found a case from Plinkusa.org for about $100 shipped. That includes a riser PCI riser card, which allows you to plug in your PCI cards at a 90 degree angle since they will not fit straight up. If you want an AGP riser card that is a little expensive. I picked up the rest from e-bay, inclusing a rack-mountable power strip, a 3com switch, and 2 25 port RJ45 patch paneel to keep everything simple and organized. I have a lot more info, so lemme know if you have any questions or want some pics.
If you've really got lots of rack-mount equipment, like routers and 1U servers, then get yourself a real rack, but if what you've got are mostly PCs in regular desktop tower cases, Metro Shelves and the like are really just as practical, and available in a much wider range of shapes and sizes. Either you can order the heavy-duty restaurant-quality stuff, or do what Michael Forman recommends in the parent article and check out a furniture store or the Container store, and get a pre-assembled unit with wheels.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
1) Buy your cabinet here: http://www.markertek.com/MTStore/Store.cfm?Search= oak+rack+cabinet and get a good looking fake oak veneer 19" 8U (product# OBRK8) for ~$110, black for ~$90, quality is good-very good. Ships flat, UPS ground $6 (cont US).
2) Buy rack proto boxes, same place. Search for CH-1 or CH-2 (Mid-Atlantic Products Rackmount boxes) that are about the right size for what you want to enclose. Most sizes under $50.
3) Use your drill, a jig saw, a little hot melt and fit your components in.
4) Smile at your creation.
We did just that and have an amazingly prof cabinet for very short money. We used the CH-3, a mini-ITX, and the components from an old case (for leds, switches, PS, etc and just hacked-out and drilled the mounting holes and slots in the proto cases. We also used an APC UPS and stuffed it into a 2 high unit and reposition the LED's to the front. Drilled and hardmounted the rest of the unit to the back of the box. With a little care in the metal hacking, it can come out beautiful.
Most places we looked, including the audio places, were just rude on the price for rackmount equip. Markertek is a broadcaster supply place, but (for some reason) has great prices on these particular items.
My first encounter with rackmount was when I bought a 1950's ex-Navy radio (Hammarlund SP600JX) with an attached Collins SSB decoder. The two were nicely held together by a couple of pieces of railing.
.... all hidden by full-length curtains (I am not kidding) or solid plywood sides (no diags needed then)
I later got a super-basic rackmount that I built as follows:
- 2 x 6-foot railings, vertical, parallel
- top and bottom wooden horizontal "beams", held with wood screws, that kept the railings at the standard 19-inch distance
- two more horizontal beams, perhaps 3 feet deep, screwed on the top "across" beam through L-shaped metal strips, and to the house wall with more screws and metal strips.
- more L-strips held the railings in place with only two screws into the floor.
In practice, wall and floor made two sides of the "cabinet", all the rest was open.
I considered adding a beam in diagonal position across the top, but never did it because the structure held up alright as it was.
Warnings:
1) for this structure to hold up well, you HAVE to have a few pieces of equipment mounted at all times
2) not good for low height units, as there is NO SUPPORT OTHER THAN THE FRONT PANEL SCREWS (with my 1950's gear, this was not a problem, as it was all at least 10 inch high), and high units also help with sidewasy stability
3) I had neither kids, nor animals, nor cleaning people around the house that could get imperiled or challenge the stability of this.
Having said that, I think it's a low cost idea that could easily be improved upon, e.g with
- mounting with one wall on a side as well, i.e. using a corner of the room for 3-D stability
- diagonal braces on the sides, going from the beam-railing joint down to the wall-floor corner
-
- perhaps a solid top, with a few fans
- perhaps a number of metal sheet covers to be left in place where there's no equipment.
I think I might build one such soon, as I am prolly getting a few excellent rackmount radios (HRO, Collins...) from an elderly neighbour who abandoned his radio hobby. If I do, a future rackmount computing device will have a home ready for it too! - I hope this helps...
Dude! What the hell are you talking about? You've got to have some serious issues if you can't mount something correctly in a relay rack. Center the load, zip in four screws from the front and, sometimes, four from the back. If you've centered your load properly those bottom two screws will hold it forever, or at least until you put the top two in. If the equipment provides for rear screws you always use them as well (like power supplies).
And who the hell is this "guy in back" anyway? You make me jealous, wish I had help. I've built entire cellular telephone sites and radio repeater sites putting things in racks and rarely have help. I've even been able to mount 75 lb power supplies in relay racks by myself without damaging anything.
I know you must have been shooting for "funny" but someone modded you up as "informative" and someone is going to get the wrong idea. Relay racks will work fine for his application.
By the way, you do know that they make four point relay racks, right?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I guess it's my packrat nature, but well, I know I got two telco racks for free (someone moving out of the building we were moving our offices into, and they were tossed in the dumpster).
I also watch the auctions. (in the DC area, Rasmus.com has quite a few). Of course, they're not as often as they were a couple years back, but you can still dig up good deals on racks/cabinets/UPSes/whatever.
However, the original poster asked for detailed specifications, on the order of the BTX form factor specifications. You don't need that level of detail (ie, hole patterns), if you're buying rails. He didn't ask for suggestions on building your own, just the specifications. He did ask for some cost effective solutions for UPSes, switches, and cases, but not the racks. [and for those, I'd go with auctions, although, for a UPS, you'll have to change out the batteries sooner than if bought new]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Keep in mind, there are two "families" of rack mounting, each with its own history and traditions.
The telco industry has been mounting equipment in "relay racks" for almost a century. You don't find many relays in them now, but back when the Western Electric Company (WECo) was making all the equipment, most of what they made were relays. Telco racks are 23 inches wide and built open, so the rack channels stand vertically and you can reach around them on all sides. They have screw holes on 1-inch centers, tapped for 12-24 screws.
Equipment mounted in "telco" racks is almost always middle-mounted. The mounting ears or flanges are located about halfway back on the chassis, meaning that the center of gravity is almost in the same plane as the rack face. This means the only force on the screws is shear load, against which they're tremendously strong. You can stand on telco gear when it's rack-mounted.
Some time after the telco industry had all this worked out, the wheel got reinvented. Deejays like to mount their mixers and effects processors in racks to manage the mess, and despite a lot of commonality between old telco gear*, they settled on racks that were 19 inches wide instead of 23. Along came the EIA to standardize this, specifying a screw thread of 10-32 and a staggered hole spacing of 1 1/4" alternating with 1/2". This gives us the "1U" size of 1 3/4". Many EIA racks don't even have threaded holes, instead they have square punchings into which you insert a "cage nut", which is easily replaced if you manage to strip the threads.
(* Many patch panels used in audio production are set up with the "longframe" or "bantam" plugs, which originated as WECo plugs on switchboards and are still used today in DS-1 patching applications.)
Mounting 19" equipment in a 23" rack would be simple enough with adapter ears. They can even compensate for the fact that most 19" equipment expects EIA hole spacing, and 23" racks invariably have WECo hole spacing. The damning difference is mid-mounting versus flush-mounting. Deejays want all their buttons and knobs to form one seamless control panel, so all their equipment has mounting ears right up at the front, with the face of the equipment. This works really well for audio gear, which is usually fairly light and doesn't stick more than a few inches behind the face of the rack.
When you try to mount a server or a UPS flush with the face of the rack, you quickly discover the mechanical limits of the screws. Because most co-lo outfits charge per vertical unit of rack space, there's a lot of pressure to make your equipment as flat as possible. This moves the center of gravity farther and farther back, while shortening the amount of rack flange over which the force will be distributed. If you get that UPS to hang there, don't even breathe on it, much less use the back edge as a stepstool while climbing into the cable tray superstructure.
When the option is available, flush-mounted equipment should always have a rear support too. This is the case with many rackmount servers, which include sliding rails for mounting. The back end of the rail must be screwed into a second rack flange, which means your cabinet needs two sets of upright channels.
For mounting deejay equipment, 19" flushmount makes sense. For mounting huge switching equipment, 23" midmount is clearly a better idea. For anything in between, it mostly depends on what options your equipment gives you. I vastly prefer mid-mounting when it's available, because it makes for a much stronger setup when all is said and done.
There are plenty of other differences between telco equipment and datacomm equipment, despite the superficial similarities. I won't get into the details of DC power, grounding, redundancy and reliability, heat dissipation, alarming, or any of the myriad "requirements" that equipment must satisfy before being located in a telco office. Suffice it to say: Datacomm equipment is happy on a desk but sometimes gets bolted into a rack. Telco equipment was designed for it.
In areas near military bases you may find a great government store called the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office. You can bid on all kinds of used DoD stuff, including rack cabinets and hardware. I have found all-metal full-featured faraday-shielded dustproof 6' tall rack cabinets, 5' long power strips, etc. I also bought an old radar video converter just to cannibalize the 4U rackmount case. If you are with a charitable org like the Boy Scouts, you get first dibs.
This has nothing really to do with the question, but it reminds me of a dream/nightmare I had recently...(tinkly music indicating either a flashback or a dream sequence)
I knew there was a problem with one of the servers in the closet, and headed that way to check it out. I noticed water running under the door, out of the closet. I opened the closet, and the rack (which wasn't really a rack, just some cheap metal shelves from a hardware store, with regular towers screwed to it haphazardly).
Behind the rack was a swirling muddy whirlpool, "Ah," I thought, "there's where the water is coming from."
So there I was standing in the muddy closet, trying to figure out how the swirling muddy whirlpool came to exist on the third floor of a four story building, and trying to stand in the doorway and reach the keyboard and mouse......(tinkly music indicating the end of either a flashback or a dream sequence)
I have NO idea where this came from, except perhaps that our servers are cobbled together from old bits (AT motherboards forced into ATX cases and whatnot), and that I can't upgrade any wiring in our failing network, because, "we're going to be moving to a new building. Soon. Real soon! Trust me!"
That, and the double-anchovy pizza right before bed...
A 19" rack is a hole 17" wide with 1" wide ears that you can screw your equipment into. If the equipment is permanently mounted just cut a hole 17" wide by the height of your equpment in a piece of 1/2 inch plywood and use pan head #10 wood screws through the holes in the ears on the equipment. Yery cheap and simple, just think outside the box and save a Yugo (no recycled metal brackets needed).
Wood is flammable, yes.
If I had built a cabinet before, probably I would know exactly how to make things perfectly square.
And pretty much the dust from anything can cause lung cancer.
But really, folks, the point is that I have a +5, Informative, and you all don't. So, hah!
What I meant to say was. . .really, folks, the point is that I just thought I'd relate what I did to make my cabinet, and thanks for pointing out the rough spots.
(This is probably going to get -1, Flamebait Overrated Troll, and negate all my good work up above.)
Well I happen to be doing the exact same thing. I decided to use an open relay rack with casters for space/ease of use purposes. Unfortunately this has not been assembled yet (physical presence issue, out of country, should have it assembled/pics by the 1st of Jan).
Relay rack 38U steel, with base (should fit under a doorway with casters)
129.00 - Rack
111.00 - Base x2 (Freestanding Application)
40.00 - Casters
Rackmount Computer Case
130.00 - Computer Case
30.00 - Power Supply (300 Watt)
15.00 - Center Mount Brackets
LCD / KVM Switch / Mounting (need to make custom rack mount for LCD Swivel)
999.00 - LCD Monitor (20")
41.49 - LCD Swivel
109.95 - Rack Mount KVM (8 Port)
18.99 - KVM Cables
Rack Mount UPS
249.99 - UPS 1500VA (free shipping from BestBuy, easy to return if problems, not cheapest price)
Hope that helps,
Jad
I agree that it's not that much, I was just quoting their entire statement, the point of which was that slashdot has already done a question like this, the info is not out of date, so why is this question being asked again.
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.