Rack rails on network equipment

Fri Sep 24 17:32:15 UTC 2021

On 9/24/21 09:37, Andrey Khomyakov wrote:

> *So ultimately my question to you all is how much do you care about the 
> speed of racking and unracking equipment and do you tell your suppliers 
> that you care? How much does the time it takes to install or replace a 
> switch impact you?*

Very little. I don't even consider it when comparing hardware. It's a 
nice-to-have but not a factor in purchasing.

You mention a 25-minute difference between racking a no-tools rail kit 
and one that requires a screwdriver. At any reasonable hourly rate for 
someone to rack and stack that is a very small percentage of the cost of 
the hardware. If a device that takes half an hour to rack is $50 cheaper 
than one that has the same specs and takes five minutes, you're past 
break-even to go with the cheaper one.

Features, warranty, performance over the lifetime of the hardware are 
far more important to me.

If there were a network application similar to rock band going on tour 
where equipment needed to be racked up, knocked down, and re-racked 
multiple times a week it would definitely be a factor. Not so much in a 
data center where you change a switch out maybe once every five years.

And there's always the case where all of that fancy click-together 
hardware requires square holes and the rack has threaded holes so you've 
got to modify it anyway.

-- 
Jay Hennigan - jay at west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV