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How Have You Equipped a Tiny Server Closet?
BenEnglishAtHome asks: "One of our remote offices will soon be gutted/rebuilt and our local IT staff managed to fumble the political ball. Our server closet is being reduced to 45 square feet and there will be no more unused desk space that can be occupied by visiting techs. Result? That 45 square feet must house 3 desktop-size servers; 3 UPSs; a fully-adjustable user workstation that includes separate adjustments for work surface height, keyboard height, and keyboard angle as well as a big ergo chair; an area suitable for workstation diagnostics; a good KVM switch; 2 monitors, keyboards, mice, and laptop docking stations that must be simultaneously available; and some amount of small item storage, while still having enough room for a door to swing into the roughly square room. The only bright side is that I can have all the A/C, power, and LAN drops I want. Has anyone managed to find and deploy a freestanding server rack/workstation/furniture system (probably something L-shaped) that can perform this many tasks in such a small space?"
They have these really great baker's racks that can handle hundreds of pounds per shelf, and will allow airflow around the computer cases. The wireframe racks are great to hook pull-ties around too, makes the cabling neater. Casters on the feet mean you can roll 'em around to access the back. You can probably put everything on it, excepting for your monitor and keyboard; and with the space savings you ought to be able to fit a small desk in there.
Several other people have recommended rack setups, and for ultimate reliability and neatness I'd have to agree; but if your budget is small a backer's rack will do the job.
Start having lots of conversations in earshot of management about electrical fires.
And on a more serious note, start talking to management about the wisdom of putting a human in the server room.
We have a similarly sized server room at my workplace, a bit more horsepower though. And we can't actually work in there for any length of time due to OSHA regs - It stays a nice comfy 86-88db in there all the time. If (when, I should say) we need to replace a server, we would need to wear earplugs to legally stay in the room long enough.
Your boss might not care about pesky little problems like the Pauli Exclusion Principle*, but when it comes to OSHA, employers tend to go out of their way to do things the "right" way (and if not, you can guarantee they will the second time).
* Yes, I know - Laugh, don't take it literally.