Rack rails on network equipment

Sat Sep 25 23:14:04 UTC 2021

(Crying, thinking about racks and racks and racks of AT&T 56k modems strapped to shelves above PM-2E-30s…)

The early 90s were a dangerous place, man.

-George 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 24, 2021, at 8:05 PM, Wayne Bouchard <web at typo.org> wrote:
> 
> Didn't require any additional time at all when equipment wasn't bulky
> enough to need rails in the first place....
> 
> 
> I've never been happy about that change.
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 09:37:58AM -0700, Andrey Khomyakov wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>> Happy Friday!
>> 
>> Would you, please, share your thoughts on the following matter?
>> 
>> Back some 5 years ago we pulled the trigger and started phasing out Cisco
>> and Juniper switching products out of our data centers (reasons for that
>> are not quite relevant to the topic). We selected Dell switches in part due
>> to Dell using "quick rails'' (sometimes known as speed rails or toolless
>> rails).  This is where both the switch side rail and the rack side rail
>> just snap in, thus not requiring a screwdriver and hands of the size no
>> bigger than a hamster paw to hold those stupid proprietary screws (lookin
>> at your, cisco) to attach those rails.
>> We went from taking 16hrs to build a row of compute (from just network
>> equipment racking pov) to maybe 1hr... (we estimated that on average it
>> took us 30 min to rack a switch from cut open the box with Juniper switches
>> to 5 min with Dell switches)
>> Interesting tidbit is that we actually used to manufacture custom rails for
>> our Juniper EX4500 switches so the switch can be actually inserted from the
>> back of the rack (you know, where most of your server ports are...) and not
>> be blocked by the zero-U PDUs and all the cabling in the rack. Stock rails
>> didn't work at all for us unless we used wider racks, which then, in turn,
>> reduced floor capacity.
>> 
>> As far as I know, Dell is the only switch vendor doing toolless rails so
>> it's a bit of a hardware lock-in from that point of view.
>> 
>> *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?*
>> 
>> I was having a conversation with a vendor and was pushing hard on the fact
>> that their switches will end up being actually costlier for me long term
>> just because my switch replacement time quadruples at least, thus requiring
>> me to staff more remote hands. Am I overthinking this and artificially
>> limiting myself by excluding vendors who don't ship with toolless rails
>> (which is all of them now except Dell)?
>> 
>> Thanks for your time in advance!
>> --Andrey
> 
> ---
> Wayne Bouchard
> web at typo.org
> Network Dude
> http://www.typo.org/~web/