shipping pre-built cabinets vs. build-on-site

Mon Apr 6 19:14:37 UTC 2009

On Monday 06 April 2009 14:46:35 Joe Abley wrote:
> Anybody here have experience shipping pre-built cabinets, with ~20U of
> routers and servers installed, connected and tested, to remote sites
> for deployment?
[snip]
> Do I even need to spend time wondering about shock-tolerant cabinets,
> or should I instead be concentrating on finding the right company to
> wrap the cabinets for shipping, and to do the shipping itself?

Read up on the way EMC ships drive arrays already preloaded into their 42U 
cabinets.  The cabinets are bolted to steel frames on special heavy duty 
pallets; there is an overwrap of cardboard; and, most importantly, on the side 
of the overwrap there is a tilt sensor that shows if the cabinet has been over 
a certain angle from vertical.  A cap over the overwrap keeps it all together, 
and everything is banded as well.

EMC cabinets are not shock mounted.

EMC shipments are also handled by dedicated two-man teams with one particular 
logistics company; they aren't shipped Fedex or UPS Freight.

For frequently shipped items, the shock mounted racks (using coiled cable, 
typically) work very well, but they are not cheap.