When a man just wants to see a great rack

G, I wonder what the most popular page on Vladville will be today….

As you know I live in state that was built on top of a drained swamp and we also just happen to get hit by a hurricane or two every year or so. This leaves a man to search for a rack to keep his equipment high enough so that the water doesn’t ruin everything when the hurricane floods the area. So if you’re in the small business how do you get a rack without breaking the bank?

First option comes from Kevin:

Depending on how many Us you need rack/enclosure depth and whether it is a 4-post rack or actual enclosure with sides and/or doors will greatly vary your price. Most open 4-post racks range in 22u to 45u size, where most enclosures you can get as small as 13u (generally used as wall mount IDF cabinets). Don’t forget a PDU if needed and cable management. Make sure you go “square hole” over “threaded hole” as this allows you more flexibility and most new servers require square hole. A bare 42U open rack will run you about $400, where as a 42u enclosure with sides, doors, stabilizers and fans can easily run $1200 and up.

Second option from Rick:  

If you can wait 2 weeks, get yourself a Gruber rack – I’ve got like 20 of them in the field and they are phenomenal.  The best way to buy Gruber, believe it or not, is through their eBay store:

Gruber eBay Store

This is a good KVM shelf:

And these are incredibly strong shelves:

Buy your stuff all at once and combine the shipping, it’s good stuff and very inexpensive. 

Here’s the ‘GOTCHA’ – Gruber uses slightly less quality Aluminum in their racks than Chatsworth – not really noticeable structurally, but if you are in the habit of over-torque-ing your rack screws or moving racks around often you’ll find that the threads on the screws are not as good on the Gruber as they are on the Chatsworth.  Can’t help it, this is what happens when you use Steel screws in Aluminum racks.  The shelves and KVM trays are all steel, obviously, with folded edges for those with girly fingers.

One from Lynne:

If this is any help, here is a spec that we use (all from Graybar) 

Chatsworth rack 19” – black – 55053-703

Shelf 26 x 19 black – 11054-719

Low profile tray 19 x 19 – 11294-719 (we buy 2 of these)

Universal cable mgmt – 30130-719

Costs around $470.00 plus your labor to put it together. We generally have 2 servers on the bottom shelf, a monitor and keyboard/mouse on the 2 trays, with a rack-mount switch and cable management.

Of course, these weenies are in the SMB market. As for how we do it at Own Web Now.. Well, unlike the SMB weenies up top we have state of the art data centers with really high end gear, such as this one. Thats how a real man mounts his gear, and when we need to move from cage to cage the cart is conveniently mounted on wheels so we just push it around – power strip, PDU, PIX and all!

Joke aside, there are a few of your options to rack your gear on the cheap and keep it safe from hurricanes and floods.

-Vlad