Do you have tips on best practices for safely racking hardware?

Here are some of our best practice tips and guidelines for a safe and successful rack build-out.

✅ Use rack-mountable equipment wherever possible

We’d strongly recommend using equipment that can be natively installed into a standard rack, without need for any specialist or compromising equipment. Servers are best installed on their compatible rails, and network devices are best using their mounting ears (or rails in some cases).

While mounting solutions like shelves and universal L-brackets have their uses in some instances, they’re best avoided in a high-uptime data centre if at all possible.

✅ Avoid stacking hardware

We strongly recommend against stacking hardware. This means that each device within the rack should be on its own mounting equipment, without using one as a base to support multiple devices.

This ensures that all devices can be removed for maintenance in isolation, without needing to carefully unstack live equipment to accommodate this.

Stacking also places increased stress on the base device and mounting equipment, which in turn places added stress on the mounting point in the rack. This is a safety concern, and may result in damage to equipment and/or personnel working in the rack.

✅ We recommend using enterprise-grade hardware

While it may be tempting to consider sticking a workstation in your rack, or even something like a laptop, phone, or home-grade switch / router, we would always recommend against it.

Non-enterprise hardware is not generally designed for deployment within a high-uptime facility such as a data centre, meaning it may not mount into your rack correctly, and may not pull air through it in keeping with how air is supplied. It is also not generally designed to operate on a 24x7 basis, which can increase failure rates.

Non-enterprise hardware can sometimes require use of home-grade power adaptors and 3-pin 13A power sockets, which again are not advisable for use in a data centre.

✅ Vertical rail depth adjustments

We set our racks to a certain vertical rail depth as standard, usually to allow for the maximum possible depth.

It’s possible, if required, to move the front vertical rails back, to accommodate hardware with deeper than usual frontages, or for cable-dense deployments that may impact the rack door.

If you need this, please let our team know before you begin installing your hardware, and we can make the necessary adjustments for you.

✅ Keep hardware racked within the marked rack units

All racks have clearly marked rack unit numbers, which can be used to ensure that equipment is mounted within a designated rack unit. This also ensures that equipment is mounted level, should the mounting equipment connect to both front and rear vertical rails.

Please do not offset hardware to sit across marked rack units, as this prevents the ability to effectively blank your racks for airflow management.

✅ Properly fix your hardware to the rack

Please use properly sized cage nuts and bolts for anything that requires them, and ensure that you’re using all of the required fixings available to you.

Putting in fewer fixings may result in a failure of the mounting equipment, which can cause damage to your equipment and/or personnel working in the rack.

✅ Carefully consider your cable management

Cable management is a major part of any successful rack deployment, so it’s good to carefully consider this from the outset.

Any passthrough routes from front-to-rear should have airflow management considerations in mind, with brush strips or closable cable dumps used. This avoids open rack units with cable breaches that are then unable to be blanked.

Cabling is best kept away from airflow entry and exit points - you can use rack mounted cable management solutions for this, or simply Velcro ties to bundle or coil cables that require it.

You can use cable management arms with hardware that supports their use, however it can sometimes be easier to undertake this yourself using suitable ties.

If you’d like any additional support in this area, feel free to get in touch.

✅ Use right-sized cables where possible

It’s best to avoid using overly long cables, and to obtain multiple length options for each cable type to keep excess cabling to a minimum. This will keep your deployment much tidier, and avoid the need for more cable management than is necessary.

Providing remote hands support to racks with poor cable management can be difficult, so to ensure speedy response times and resolutions, it is best to keep things in good order from the beginning.

✅ Label your hardware

Labelling can be a very useful tool in enabling a speedy and issue-free resolution to issues, whether handled by your own engineers, or ours via remote hands.

If you have very good record keeping, you may be able to simply use rack unit numbers to reference equipment, however it’s never a bad idea to bolster this with additional on-device labels.

You may also wish to consider labelling cables, particularly any critical links that you may wish to call attention to during a support interaction. This may avoid the need for cable tracing, which can cost valuable time during an emergency.

✅ Consider a hardware refresh if using legacy systems

It can be tempting to obtain older, sometimes discontinued hardware for very low purchase prices, which can work well, however do consider how difficult this may be to maintain in future.

It’s also worth noting that newer hardware is often more efficient, with better power-to-performance ratios, which can result in the utilisation of less energy within your rack. This could reduce your recurring operating costs, which will generally far outweigh any capital savings on the hardware purchasing side.

We can assist with hardware procurement through our vendor network, if this may be of interest.

✅ Avoid splitting power outlets

The power outlets on a PDU are designed for supporting power to single devices. The use of Y-splitters or any other type of passive power splitting cable / device is best avoided, as this can put unchecked additional load on an outlet, which can cause trip events.

It also increases the risk of an issue to each split device, given that this is then a shared outlet with shared load considerations.

If you need more power outlets, we have PDU upgrade options available, or we can look into daughter PDUs where viable - get in touch to discuss options.