Engineering Blog

What are the Proper Server Rack Requirements Needed to Protect Equipment from Extreme Conditions?

Frances Bennett Engineering Blog, Materials of Enclosures, Steel enclosures , , ,
What are the Proper Server Rack Requirements Needed to Protect Equipment from Extreme Conditions?

I believe this has already happened to the majority of us, you have purchased a product that you really need for your project and you are more than willing to wait for it for a few days. Even weeks is acceptable to you. When it finally arrives, it looks disastrous.

Meanwhile, while it is very disappointing to receive a product that was not handled very well, wer are very sure that there can only be a handful of customers who can truly appreciate receiving their parcel in a very good condition. Whether through the delivery folks just having a bad day or there can be some uncontrollable forces. These humans are the people responsible to delivering the products on your front steps, smiling wryly while waiting for your cash to be received in exchange of the product.

The most efficient technicians are now long past trusting a corrugated box that is only worth 5USD. These boxes can protect thousands of their products – even thousands dollar worth of IT equipment – instead of utilizing a shock-absorbent rackmount proper packaging cases. These can come handy when delivery the rack servers together with sensitive pieces of rack server gear coming from one site to another.

There are companies who supplies these kind of server rack cases that are made with military grade materials and production standards.

These military-like cases are very ideal for the military field applications – they are portable, can be stacked, and most important of all very efficient & practical! The rail system that comes with it just slides right out like a file cabinet style. This enables the users to gain complete access to the equipment you are using while doing an equipment installation and just wiring a cinch.

These type of cases can meet the military and ATA specifications. There are companies that offers free shipping methods. Just inquire to the company you have seen it with for the full specifications of these server racks.

There are also all-purpose transport cases that are readily available in the market. They are great to be used for the trade show displays and they can be use to protect musician gear.

Server Rack Enclosures Produced in Asia

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Enclosure Materials, Engineering Blog, Metal Enclosures, Engineering Project,

An engineer just recently returned from their annual quick trip in the Northeastern Asia. They had a hard time to assimilate all the wide variety of several issues – both in the economic and political aspect. There is one trend that has been repeatedly seen in the shift of direction especially in the Chinese government that is heading towards the military buildup and very far away from the manufacturing sector.

Our country has recently heard of the increased tariff taxes, decreased sales, and these factors has made a rise in the overall sense of concern. The Chinese manufacturers are not receiving parts of the incentives that they are supposed to receive. However, there are still growing businesses but few buildings going on. There is still an existing effort to latch on to any businesses as long as they can.

With this in mind, the engineers were really surprised at the increase in level of protection that is being seen in the improvements of the server rack. In today’s factory the engineers have saw a wide series of solutions that ranges from basic 4 post open cabinet – these are great solution to increase the maximum air flow for them to complete the server rack rooms.

The engineers have also seen the narrow panel space to achieve the maximum space utilization for those server cabinets that has the extra width to accommodate the cable waterfalls. The engineers have also seen the welded units, knock down units (manufactured for easier transportation), and seismic units. With this in mind, the majority of the ventilation that is coming from the perforated doors to curved doors were also installed.

The engineers were also able to see some of the cleverest solutions in terms of the cable management. Together with the plastic “teeth” these can be readily snapped in order to make these fit to accommodate the needs of the customer and it effectively covers to protect the equipment. This has made the thinking of the engineers to be able to fully recognize the several industries that continues on pressing on with the evolvement. Even if with this comes with the servers that continues to shrink, the applications of the equipment as well as the opportunities that may come can work with several server and continues to produce consistent results.

Even if there are products that were as large as the server racks, the market for these server racks are going global. The development of these industries are up to the manufacturers, to be able to continue in gleaning on the best innovations that can come around the globe.

How can a PCI Compliant Server Rack Enclosures Can Save Up a Lot of Space?

Frances Bennett Engineering Blog, Materials of Enclosures, Steel enclosures ,
PCI Compliant, Server Rack Enclosures

The majority of the consumers does not consider or even think about the total safety of the personal information the companies can get when they purchase a product via credit card – even eating at a restaurant or checking in a hotel with your credit card can have the potential to take away your most valuable information. However, for businesses the privacy of their customers’ information should be their primary concern – and nothing else.

This is not only because the PCI Security Requirements for these companies should be fulfilled (as mandated by the major credit card companies) but also the importance of the security and safety of customer private information drives the U.S. economy at large. The major credit card providers that should comply to these are American Express, Discover, JCB, Master Card, and Visa.

The retail stores, restaurants involved and the hotels are having a hard time or difficulty of complying with these regulations because it is very expensive to keep up with the PCI requirement. This requirement tells businesses that they should have a highly restricted physical access to the cardholder’s data and valuable information.

The retail stores, restaurants, and hotels are very busy places most of the time. The personnel are in and out of the facility for the majority of the time and even the best security cannot check on everyone 24/7.

There is one way to do this – restricting the access area by constructing a separate data center of computer room. However the space that this computer area will take would cost lots of money and the money that would be invested in a separate computer room can be spent on other more important stuff such as floor displays, food preparation equipment, and dining area. Most often than not, managers tend to disapprove the notion of this.

However, there are companies that offers a very convenient solution but in a less expensive way. There are server racks that are PCI compliant that can house all the necessary servers, storage, as well as networking equipment in a space-saving manner. These server racks can be wall mounted, desktop, portable racks, or even freestanding. Every wall mounted server rack is manufactured to be tough made from solid steel with the aluminum frames and panels.

Every single door placed on the server rack enclosure does come with the standard and specific durable keyed lock. It is very important that the manufacturers of these server rack can offer enclosure with the tight-lock security in their enclosures as well as variety of space saving shapes and sizes. There are also different configurations that should be offered such as vertical mount, swinging door, server side mount and included is the corner configurations. This thing is important for the PCI compliance.

The manufacturer companies of these enclosures should be able to understand that the PCI compliance is a very important issue for the customers in the retail setting and of course to the hospitality businesses. That’s why now businesses should be keen in keeping their customers’ important information in a safe place.

The Most Common Server Rack Issues Today

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Server Cabinet, Server Rack, Server Rack Issues

There are common problems with server racks today. If your room does not have enough space for the data center, office, or if your space has the smallest data closet – you would still want to get everything inside this space. However, engineer should be efficient in determining ways how they can fit everything into a tiny space. With this in mind, engineers should ask the right question because there are various problems that comes with this and they should be dealth efficiently. There are companies that offers comprehensive line of server racks and wall mounts but you need to ask yourself the right question.

Question #1: Can server racks be installed vertically?

Of course they can be installed vertically. There are several options to install your server racks vertically and there are company that offers vertical 30” wall mounts available in the market today. There are server rack series that have size ranges from 4u to 8u given the standard size of 23” depth together with 30” depth. These server racks are just right for your needed server closet. However, you can still move the server racks around without having a full size rack taking up most of the foot print on the space you have. The server racks can have the plexiglass top and you can still have the capability to effectively manage and see the equipment inside the server racks.

There are server racks that can be installed under a desk and you can easily install or mount them on a wall for you to be able to place your equipment vertically. What specifically makes the server rack very unique is that it has a side that was connected to the rails while the other has a universal square. Any equipment can be handled by this server rack.

Question #2: How to deal with Server Rack that takes up too much space?

If you need a more narrow server rack to use more space inside your data center, carefully consider using a slim server rack. This rack has a very closed and narrow space build to be efficiently allow more space inside the server racks. With the narrow build of this server, you will have to understand the equipment you are placing inside these racks. Because these type of server racks has a load capacity of maximum of 400 lbs.

Question #3: Can I Place Server Racks in Different Places? The above mentioned narrow server rack is great to be used under a desk, but there are times that you might need a more conventional rack that can be installed under the desk. There are server racks that can be perfectly placed inside these tables. It is also durable because it can support up to 3000 lb. They can also be adjusted for 4-post racks that can efficiently work well for any given equipment. They can have size of 22.5″ deep to 35.25″ deep. You can also add small casters inside this tiny titan and the 19” wide mini server rack can be practically placed inside everywhere.

Air-Conditioned Server Rack is the Best Way to Give Convenience, Safety, and Right Protection

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Air-Conditioned Server Rack is the Best Way to Give Convenience, Safety, and Right Protection

There are manufacturing companies that offers premium designed server racks with installed air conditioning unit inside it. With this design, it will be able to withstand majority of the rugged and harsh indoor conditions. These racks are primarily designed for the places that does not have enough ventilation because of improper temperature. Or these racks are built for places that has the tendency to accumulating dirt and is very prone to dirt circulating around the place. The cabinet makes it very efficient for the companies to properly and safely store the server rack cabinets to be able to maintain the integrity of the equipment.

The manufacturers of these server rack today provides a well maintained air-conditioned server racks that can effectively withstand the inner rugged conditions that widely exists in some of the environments today. They are primarily designed server cabinets that will be able to withstand some of the harsh and very extreme environments. Inside of these, they have properly installed ventilations for the areas where there are very harsh elements.

With this in mind, you will have peace because the companies will be assured that their very sensitive equipment will be well protected and will be housed well. They won’t likely become damaged throughout the process of it all.

These air-condiitoned server racks are also available in different sizes: 4,000 BTU, 8,500 BTU, 10,000 BTU and 20,000 BTU (5,860 watts). They also have indoor temperatures that ranges between -40 and 131 degrees Fahrenheit. It also exhibits the external temperature probe and display. You can also select either side-mount or rack mount as your installation option.

Because of the functionality of these server racks, they offer a great deal of flexibility and freedom for you to design your floor layout effectively because these server rack cabinets can be manufactured in different 112 sizes. Several cabinet color options are widely available and the several sets of these adjustable mounting rails have are already positioned inside the cabinet.

These amazing air conditioned server racks gives the companies the advantages that it needs. It comes with a very good compact footprint. The companies can get their equipment quickly installed inside the cabinet and it helps them for it to become completely assembled and joined together.

Four Efficient Ways on How to Properly Select the Right Wall Mount Server Rack Cabinet

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Air-Conditioned Server Rack, Server Rack

There are server racks can come in variety of options. There are also wallmount enclosures and cabinets widely available and this makes it very hard for the engineer to effectively determine what is the best sever rack for any given environment. In this article, we will discuss the five most important factors to help you determine which is the best cabinet to be used for your data center.

1. Determine the Cabinet Height Needed for Server Racks

Carefully identify the height that will be importantly needed for your data center. This is a very important aspect and a crucial starting point. Gather the equipment you are planning to install in your office and identify the number of U spaces needed and necessary for your server rack. The important information you need to know is that the “U Space” is practically equivalent to 1.75 inches. Make sure that you measure properly the size of your server rack. If in case you only need an 8U space right now, it is also important to consider adding more space for the future growth of your data center.

2. Determine the Wallmount Cabinet Depth for Server Racks

Given the minimum height that was already determined, the engieners can now concentrate on determining the internal depth of the wallmount. More and more server rack wallmount sizes are being manufactured and anyone can efficiently see a size variation of 11 inches that has 30 inches dep size. While your server rack can be only have a roughly 18 inches in depth, it is better to consider the minimum internal depth required for cabling which is worth 3 inches. An optimum 21 inch depth should be the least required internal depth.

3. Determine the Wallmount Cabinet Weight for Server Racks

After determining and finding the right cabinet that can fit the needs of your data center in terms of height and internal depth. Once the cabinet can efficiently hold the equipment purely based on its weight capacity, that would be ideal. There are server racks that can accommodate this need. In addition to this, you can install your server rack vertically. You might also need to install and determine the right server rack you needed if you are planning to install your equipment vertically.

4. Determine the Wallmount Cabinet Features for Server Racks With this in mind, there are unlimited variety of good features available in wallmount server racks. The right style of the wallmount can be properly fixed and it can also be swinging. In addition to this, this is also vertical, a NEMA 12, or any style anyone can relate to. If you need the ability to remove the side panels of the server rack, just tell the manufacturer. Also if you need your cabinets to have a lock and a key just tell them you would need these features

The Best Practices to Improve Rack Airflow Tips for the Server Rack Enclosures

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There are several ways on how to greatly improve the cooling inside the server rack just by utilizing blanking panels in able to effectively manage the air flow very efficiently. In selecting a server rack that has built-in channels to accommodate better cable management and have improved air flow, the removal of the obsolete or unimportant equipment from the rack should be done.

With this in mind, an engineer should consider that a 3-phase power can greatly increase the amperage available inside the server rack. It can decrease the overall number of PDUs needed for the power management and it can leave more space to improve airflow.

The rising energy costs are now being compelled by several engineers to re-plan and re-think the IT structure together with their best practices. They are also gearing towards decreasing the power consumption by implementing the best standards for energy efficiency. The rightful planning should include the hot or cold isles containment strategies and managing the current and future hot spots. There should also be continued monitoring of the heat dissipation process inside the data center that will help companies and engineers to greatly increase the cooling capacity inside the server rack. The sealing cable openings placed on the floor with grommets is the primary key to do this.

The Power Distribution Units (PDUs) are now evenly distributes power to other servers during a power strip. The Rack mount power strips are now being specifically manufactured specially for the server racks and wall mounted racks that are placed vertically or behind the mounting posts. Placed inside a back portion of the cabinet. The power strips will now fall under two different categories: intelligent and standard.

While having the standard power trips that consists of some features that can give very important information – indicators and output displays – they should be effectively managed in-person and on-site personnel.

On the contrary, the most intelligent power strips that gives remote power control should allow the equipment administrators to effectively perform a cold reboot of the rack servers. This should also include the devices and other troubleshoot problems coming from any location provided that there is an internet connection. It greatly decreases the downtime it takes for the servers and having the vital business functions should be online very fast.

These remote power products does not only gives a very efficient control of these systems but they also give permissions for the equipment administrators to be able to properly leverage the leading advances in the power distribution systems.

Flanged NEMA Rated Plastic Electronics Enclosures

Frances Bennett Engineering Blog, Materials of Enclosures ,

My boyfriend has a slight obsession with Jordan shoes. He has at least 10 pairs sitting in his closet at any given moment. He knows months in advance when the next release date is for his favorite kicks and will stay close to a computer the day of so he is able to buy a pair before they quickly sell out.

Polycase has been anticipating our own release date for the flanged NEMA enclosures for several weeks now, and I’m happy to announce that they have arrived. These boxes won’t help you with your jump shot but they will help keep your electronics dry, as each enclosure includes an internal waterproofing gasket. We are very excited to have the new flanged versions of our WA, WC, and WP NEMA-rated series available.

If you have previously been purchasing our NEMA boxes accompanied by a NEMA flange kit, we encourage you to try the new flanged NEMA boxes. The molded-on surface mounting flanges are a convenient feature of this box.  The flanges allow you to mount the box to a surface without having to remove the cover.

In addition to the flanged series, quite a few of our customers had been asking for larger enclosures. We listened and took action by adding 3 new sizes to the NEMA family, the 40, 42 and 44. Our largest enclosures, the WA-44, WC-44 and WP-44, now reach 14 inches in length. And remember, our WP, WC, and WA series NEMA enclosures are all designed to IP65 of IEC 529 and NEMA 1, 2, 4, 4x, 12 and 13 specifications.

What Should be the Characters of the Ink that will be Used to Print on Plastic Electronics Enclosure?

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Just recently, my boyfriend and I just spent a very long weekend to attend a out-of-town wedding. The family of my friend and our friends came over from all over the country just to attend her wedding. There were even English guests all the way from United Kingdom. This is the true testament that the wonderful couple are now finally getting married. People have spent time, money, and the effort just to be there for the celebration.

Before the wedding which was scheduled on a Sunday, there was a mandatory practice the Friday before for the wedding rehearsal. The amazing ceremony will be held at a riverbank park with the reasonable outdoor space reception just for the family. Sunday is a casual celebration and when Monday comes, this is going to be the celebration for the people who was not able to come to the wedding last Sunday. There were handmade decorations and pretty favors, the family style dining was good. There was good bear and the eclectic mix of music. Some guests might question the rustic appearance but our entire weekend was perfectly amazing especially for the happy couple.

With this in mind, knowing the characteristics are very helpful. Not only when working with other personalities from other people, but also this is very vital when dealing with certain chemical properties. Such as ink used for printing on enclosures. This is the type of ink used to print on pad for electronic enclosures. The characteristics does not only exhibit what the product is, but also what the material can be resisted.  

There are numerous characteristics that are necessary to have the permanent ink to be just like that: permanent. For example, if the customer wants the ink to be totally unaffected even if the enclosure is stacked on top of each other. Now, the stacked enclosures will not be damaged even if it is shipped because the right ink is used for the printing of the enclosure.

Or you can just imagine that there was a customer that wants to place something on top of the enclosure, if the ink was used was not the right one, there is a possibility that the graphics will be damaged. The abrasion resistance only means that the ink will not we wear in a way that it is completely gone by means of friction.

Over the course of several years with this type of experience, there are blog posts that are going to be explored using the different types of ink resistance that will be offered. Just feel free to comment about the characteristics or types of resistance you are looking for with your ink.

What are the Post-Production Waterproof Enclosures and Its Uses?

Frances Bennett Engineering Blog, Steel enclosures ,

If winter has come to Cleveland, there is one indicator that it has officially come to this place. There will be a 20 degree blizzard that I have to drive through the morning. Of course, with my 2 years old Labrador, I do not get the option of just hibernating for the winter time.

My dog does not understand the blizzard cold – I mean it is too cold! He cannot get it because has a very beautiful fur coat! That is why I spent money on a pair of thermal pants and very pretty cargo sweatpants. I did not realize how handy they became until I got home from our very early morning walk, both myself and my dog was totally soaked. However, my cell phone which was in my pants all the time was totally dry. Waterproof pants are totally cool, right?

I have several customers who always ask me how to make our product lines of enclosure waterproof. While we have several electronics enclosure that are already designed to be waterproof, most of these enclosures are not. The waterproof enclosures have an amazing gasket that was in the track that can seal out the moisture.

Once the cover is now screwed on the base of the enclosure, the gasket will start to flatten out that will seal the electronics inside. This is because the track is now molded unto the enclosure, it can be designed to have the exact dimensions that will give the appropriate space needed. There are times that I am not lucky enough and there will still be customers that will call us back to say that they were able to waterproof the standard enclosures. In our next post, we will going to take a look at some of the customer options that they have shared with me.