Earthing Server Racks

[joshcoombs]

It just occured to me this morning that the rack that our servers are in is not earthed. Should it be?

Same applies for all of our switch cabinets, they have earth bonding points but are not connected to any earth?

 

Should we connect all our cabinets to soem kind of earth? - Or are we worrying about nothing? Are your cab's and racks earthed?

 

Thanks

[apaton]

I'M NOT A CERTIFIED ELECTRICIAN - PLEASE SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE (GET OUT OF JAIL CARD;))

 

Most of my customers don't earth the racks directly, but are earthed through a correctly installed PDU's (Power Distribution Unit) and earthed through the socket.

 

When earthing the rack to ground and through PDU/socket, one needs to check that they are at the same potential.

 

I'M NOT A CERTIFIED ELECTRICIAN - PLEASE SEEK PROFESSIONAL ADVICE (Have I said that already?)

 

Andy

Edited October 6, 2009 by apaton

[mjs_mjs]

yes they should be earthed !!!

 

if a live wire were to fall out and touch your rack (in an uncoated part) and you another - you would get a potentially fatal shock. if eathed they should short the fuse/pop a breaker, alerting you to an issue. u should also have EPO's on the room and on your UPS's too to avoid issues of electruction.

 

i'm not qulified ither - but i know enough to say the above.

[mjs_mjs]

our cabs are earthed via the pdu also

[joshcoombs]

EPO being?

[maniac]

I think this topic has come up for discussion before.

 

None of my racks in this school are earthed except by the equipment that's inside them which is plugged into the normal electricity outlets and earthed this way.

 

I spoke in depth to an engineer about this who said it's not actually a requirement, but is recommended for big installations and in most places they wouldn't earth the rack just the equipment that's inside it, and also modern circuit breakers would trip long before there was any risk of someone actually getting hurt.

 

We actually had an incident a while back where a laptop power lead got caught in the door of one of our cabinets and was damaged, but the power tripped out without anyone even noticing. It took a while for the site guys to track down what was causing it to trip every time they tried to reset the breaker, we were quite amazed when we saw the damage the next day, but also relieved that the electrical safety systems worked as they should have.

 

Mike.

[mjs_mjs]

EPO being?

 

the big red button you hit and it kills all power in the room. Emergency power off.

 

it's used in big data centers to shut everything off should there be a problem (such as fire).

[pete]

Just ensure you get a molly-guard fitted to the EPO, should you have one.