Computer Security & Solutions have had years of experience selling 19″ rack cabinets, also called server racks, now they are used in all data centres throughout the world.

• Even your ISP will use them,
• Your mobile phone provider uses them
• Your land line telephone provider uses them too!

They are used for storing servers in a manageable way - over time as servers moved from the free standing solution (similar size to a tower PC) to the tiny blade servers of now, the demand is increased accordingly, as a standard 19 inch rack can accommodate up to 30 x 1U servers, based on a 42U high server rack.

Now to understand the server cabinet/rack-mount cabinet terminology, I will try to explain it!

19″ Rack - this is taken from the centre mounting holes at the front of the mounting rails that are positioned at each side of the cabinet, both front and back. This actually means that the equipment is around 425 mm wide to fit in between the rails.

1U - All server/rack-mount cabinets are measured in U’s - why? I don’t know…but each U is equal to 1.75 inch or 44.45 mm. This is a good as the server manufacturers realised that if they were to sell to this market they would have to provide servers in U’s. So now you can buy 1U, 2U, 4U and 8U high servers.

Fixed shelf - As the name suggests, this is a fixed shelf that mounts to the 4 internal mounting posts, that form the 19 inch rails. This is used to support UPS’s (normally in the base of the enclosure) or other heavy equipment.

Cage nuts - These are the nuts that have a sort of spring attached to them and they fit into the square holes in the mounting rails. Normally supplied in bags of 50.

KVM - This is a sophisticated switch that can switch or monitor any given number of servers up to 400, from 1 KVM device, these devices have an inbuilt monitor and keyboard much like a laptop computer, only they are designed for server monitoring. These save a huge amount of space and energy, as previously each server needed it’s own monitor and keyboard and with some of the data centres having thousands of servers this would be a waste of space, energy and money.

I hope this helps in the mind field of server racks! To take the guess work out of a supplier, we can recommend a company called Orion UK who are based in Leeds, UK.

If you wish to discuss Industrial, dustproof computer enclosures, please contact us directly on 0844 8841899.