subject: Data Cabinet Features How The Rack Makes It Easy To Install And Manage Servers [print this page] The installation of servers can be a tricky proposition involving heavy and sensitive equipment in a confined space. The data cabinet has many design features intended to make both installation and maintenance much easier than it used to be.
Most servers are mounted on rail slides which fit into the housing of the cabinet. These slides may be extended to a number of predefined lockable positions. The purpose of this is to allow maintenance without the weight of the server bearing down on the user or creating unnecessary shear forces on the racking itself.
It used to be the case that the rails in a data cabinet were screwed to the side of a server. Now servers tend to be fitted with drop and lock pin arrangements, which allow a single person to fit a new server into the rails. The pins simply drop through holes in the rails, and are locked once the server is in position.
The data cabinet may incorporate folding cable trays. A folding cable tray folds up neatly behind a server when it is installed ensuring the cables are all tidy and out of the way. When the server is slid out of the rack, the tray unfolds, allowing the server to remain plugged in and operational during maintenance and diagnosis. This also means that an engineer is always sure which cable belongs to which server.
Some modern servers help engineers by including LED on both front and back. So problems may be diagnosed as easily from behind the server as from the front of it.
One of the simplest and most effective bits of kit in a modern data cabinet is a handle, incorporated into the server rails assembly. By having a handle handy, an engineer may push and pull the server in and out of position without having to tug the wires and cables connected to it. This of course reduces the risk of accidentally compromising a network during routine server installation and maintenance operations.
The data cabinet is such a simple design, normally accessible front and back and with removable or vented side panels for ease of access and cooling. The idea being that the different space requirements of each installation may be answered by a single design.
The only variable in most data cabinet design is overall height and depth. While height is measured in standard increments the U measurement depth is measured in varying ranges of millimetres. Most server rails allow the user to lock load bearing points at different depths so a server rack system will normally be specified at the high end of the depth spectrum and modified to accept shallower units as and when necessary.
Not all data cabinets have to be installed in a data centre. Some very useful ranges now exist designed specifically for incorporation into offices shared with human workers. These cabinets may have wood veneer finishes to fit with the office decor or they might have an extra level of sound proofing designed to minimise the noise of active switches and fans in the office environment.
