Rack rails on network equipment

Sun Sep 26 09:37:06 UTC 2021

> We operate over 1000 switches in our data centers, and hardware failures that require a switch swap are common enough where the speed of swap starts to matter to some extent. We probably swap a switch or two a month.

having operated a network of over 2000 switches, where we would see
maybe one die a year (and let me tell you, some of those switches were
not in nice places...no data centre air handled clean rack spaces etc)
this failure
rate is very high and would certainly be a factor in vendor choice.
for initial install, there are quicker ways of dealing with cage nut
installs... but when a switch die in service, the mounting isnt a
speed factor, its the cabling (and
as others have said, the startup time of some modern switches, you can
patch every cable back in before the thing has even booted these
days).

alan