Getting Power to a Rack Enclosure?

JazzyJ asks: "I need some ideas on some fire/electrical code compliant ways to get power into some bare bones rack mount enclosures I have. The racks are essentially in the center of a room with 3 ft around all sides. There's a 4 outlet box on each wall. Other than getting building maintenance to drop me a circuit along the floor or out of the ceiling, what options for getting power into these monsters do I have? Extension cords are right out, that is against fire/electrical code. Help!?"

Comments

true story

[morcheeba]

very funny!

True story: a customer had one of our systems in a rack, and it worked great when all closed up. But as soon as they opened the cover to see the pretty lights that blinked while we recorded the data generated by their radar system, the system stopped working. We had debugged it in the lab with the covers off (albiet with simulated data), so it should work best in this configuration.

Problem: humongus radar sitting on the roof of the building was glitching our circuit... that was the radar we were recording data off of, and the whole purpose of our system. Closing the front cover shielded us. We had concentrated on recording the binary data that their A/D's were giving us, and had forgotten the implications of the source of this data.