Sylv3r Posted June 25, 2011 Posted June 25, 2011 Now I know theres probably no right and wrong answers to this question, but I am currently in school today unboxing our new kit ready to rack into our cabinet over the next week. Does anybody have any preferences or hints and tips as to the best order to the put the following kit into an empty server cabinet. 2 x 1U Switches 1 x 1U Autoloader 1 x 2U Diskbox 2 x 2U ESX Servers 1 x 2U SAN 2 x 2U UPS's I am thinking the heaviest stuff at the bottom, but other than that, I can't really think of any necessary order. I'd be interested in hearing your views. Right now back to the unboxing - as you some of you may have seen the picture I have just posted on twitter - these UPS's are going to take some moving for one person!
Sylv3r Posted June 25, 2011 Author Posted June 25, 2011 ups, autoloader, san, servers, diskbox ,switches Cheers - I take it you are talking bottom - up?
bossman Posted June 25, 2011 Posted June 25, 2011 UPS,Servers,San,diskbox,autoloader,switches and if you have one a KVM with smoothwall. Bottom up 1
Sylv3r Posted June 25, 2011 Author Posted June 25, 2011 UPS,Servers,San,diskbox,autoloader,switches and if you have one a KVM with smoothwall. Bottom up Bottoms up
featured_spectre Posted June 25, 2011 Posted June 25, 2011 UPS at the bottom, always always always. SAN just above Servers just above Diskbox just above Autoloader just above Switches at the top If you have a Smoothwall box and a kvm, put them under the switches. Similar to bossman, but not quite the same :-) 1
FN-GM Posted June 25, 2011 Posted June 25, 2011 You dont want your rack top heavy, so i tend to fill racks with the heavier stuff at the bottom and the lighter stuff at the top. Then the KVM in an appropriate place so you can use it. 1
Sylv3r Posted June 25, 2011 Author Posted June 25, 2011 UPS at the bottom, always always always. SAN just above Servers just above Diskbox just above Autoloader just above Switches at the top If you have a Smoothwall box and a kvm, put them under the switches. Similar to bossman, but not quite the same :-) This was my initial idea - if anybody else can argue against it, I will probably go with this. Thanks everyone for your ideas up to now.
GrumbleDook Posted June 27, 2011 Posted June 27, 2011 3 things to consider when installing kit into your rack. 1 - H&S. Racks and kit in racks has to be considered under 2 areas of H&S ... a) use of equipment and b) how the equipment impacts on the H&S of the server room / environment To some extent it is affected by how you make use of the kit in the rack, either by remote / lights out or by hands on / direct KVM access. If you are hands-on at the KVM then you should consider the length of time spent at it, the range of people accessing it and the varied requirements for this. Also consider the other aspects of working environment within the room containing the rack (eg noise, temperature, working space, etc). The placement of equipment should also be planned against other aspects of H&S such as moving / lifting equipment, space hazards, fire hazards, etc. Sometimes the placement or relocation of heavy equipment will be determined by the available people / tools to lift / move the equipment. 2 - Maintenance. Although it is expected that equipment, once purchased and installed, will just work, we have to accept the reality that things can and will go wrong. All equipment installed in the racks should be in a position to be individually serviced or removed without affecting any other device within the rack (apart from technical / logical dependencies ... eg equipment plugged into the UPS, servers using the SAN). As much as there is a H&S requirement on staff which support the kit within the school, there is also a requirement to look after those who come to service / replace equipment / parts. There is nothing worse than trying to have to squeeze down the back / side of the rack to do some work, trying to dislocate your arm so you can find that one cable to unplug so you don't rip everything else out of the core switch when having to replace a unit. 3 - Security. All equipment should be appropriately secured, logically and physically, no matter where the location of the rack. This might mean that certain equipment has to be placed in particular racks in a school, in particular locations, due to security. The MIS box, SAN and backup system might be kept in a more secure rack (eg one that actually *has* a lock on it!) because other racks in the server room, or racks in other locations, are not secure. Saying all of this though ... @bossman does cover it quite well, but for anyone who has to consider things from scratch it is worth considering the above. 1
Butuz Posted June 27, 2011 Posted June 27, 2011 One thing I would note is to always leave at least 2u, preferably 4u spare at the bottom before fitting your UPS's. Just in case of a possible flood really, having UPS's right at the very bottom means if you get more than a couple of inches of water, god forbid, you could be risking your entire rack as a UPS getting flooded out has the potential to fry anything connected to it and possibly catch fire if your really unlucky. Apart from that consideration the rest of the advice above is spot on. Butuz
plexer Posted June 27, 2011 Posted June 27, 2011 Poroblem with that though is if the ups are the reasonably large ones is getting them into place, I guess the mounting rails for them fix front and back though. Ben
thepineapplehead Posted June 27, 2011 Posted June 27, 2011 Just had a thought ... does anybody actually close and lock their cabs?
FN-GM Posted June 27, 2011 Posted June 27, 2011 Just had a thought ... does anybody actually close and lock their cabs? I close the doors but not lock. The server room is locked up anyway and a few people only have the keys so it doesnt really matter.
localzuk Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 Just had a thought ... does anybody actually close and lock their cabs? I don't - as the cabinet we have is terrible, the room layout is odd, and cooling with the doors on the cabinet is shocking and causes the temp in cab to increase by at least 10 degrees.
JonWPS Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 Our is locked....but the back is completely open as it had to be removed to fit our new MIS server in. Hoping to get a new rack and tidy the gaff up this summer.
Roberto Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 (edited) Working along the lines of the H&S principles Tony mentions, this is how we plan racks at Luton Six Form College: UPS (not that we have any in rack in server rooms these days) at the bottom of the cab - H&S dictates keeping the amount of lifting needed to get these beasts into place to a minimum, not to mention avoiding making the rack top-heavy. SANs tend to go just above these lower level things, again avoiding putting very heavy stuff higher up than needed. We don't put these right at the bottom of the cab tho due to advice from Dell/Unisys who pointed out that disk enclosures pull a lot of air in and if they're at the bottom of the cab this will include a lot of dust. Switches - if they're network infrastructure, then in a network infrastructure cabinet. If they're part of something else (e.g. phone system, iSCSI) then with the item they support. That's how we do it anyway, if you can't have a separate switch cab then I'd suggest near the top, keeping in mind access to them needs to be as easy as possible. Don't forget that its possible to mount switches on the reverse side of a cabinet, which works well for SAN fabric switches, for example. KVM monitor/keyboard tray (if applicable) - roughly in the middle at a comfortable height for operators. These are actually the first thing we plan/place due to operator comfort/H&S being paramount. Tape Autoloaders or anything else that requires frequent operator access/intervention as part of its normal operation: roughly in the middle at a comfortable height for operators... which translates to directly just above or just below the KVM tray. Edited June 28, 2011 by Roberto
GrumbleDook Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 One of the other things to consider is airflow within the cabinet. I tend to put this under H&S as it is to do with performance in a given environment. Some kit now comes with different airflow compared to previous kit ... the newer Cisco routers with side to side airflow is a pain in the next for some folk ... so it might need to be in a different rack (are per @Roberto's comment on comms infrastructure being in its own rack).
MatthewL Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 This is the setup of one of our typical site cabs, the server suite cabs are different. In ours UPS's go at the bottom, then servers, followed by routers and firewall, then patch panels and switches, spaced out at 3/4 panels then switch. at the top is a distribution switch and any fibre. Depending on the cab at the back at the top will be fibre and any phone lines that come in and terminate to a patch panel.
robknowles Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 Hi, We have 4 different cabinets. Two Cabinets used for servers (each less than half-filled). One Cabinet used soley for storage/iscsi switches and one Cabinet used for Comms Equipment. This way everything is pretty much kept seperate and with any cabling that gets done I don't have to worry much about the servers. We have a seperate floor standing UPS (some 3 phase beast) that goes into a seperate power distrubition unit to feed each cabinet. We have the server room on a seperate lock, each cabinet is locked and all the servers/storage units etc where they have lockable bezels also have these locked too. On the server cabinets switches are kept at the top, but mounted on the rear rails - largest/heavyist servers (4U) at the bottom - working the way up to 1U servers. On the comms cabinet - patch panels at the top, then the core switch/router and below that firewall, ruckus zone director etc. Cheers Rob
Roberto Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 the newer Cisco routers with side to side airflow is a pain in the next for some folk Really? They do that? I'm so glad we avoided Cisco for our infrastructure refit. Only bit of kit in our place is the JANET-owned router (with no side to side air flow) and that's still more Cisco on site than I would ideally like.
featured_spectre Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 Roberto I wouldn't mind taking a look around. I have heard good things about your place :-)
Roberto Posted June 28, 2011 Posted June 28, 2011 Roberto I wouldn't mind taking a look around. I have heard good things about your place :-) We can't exactly host an open day for everyone off our own backs, but if we can work out a schedule then you and others are welcome to visit. I don't think we've got anything that special going on though...
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