Re: Rack rails on network equipment

[George Herbert <george.herbert () gmail com>]

I’ve seen Dell rack equipment leap for safety (ultimately very very unsuccessfully…) in big earthquakes.  Lots of rack 
screws for me.

-George 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 24, 2021, at 9:41 AM, Andrey Khomyakov <khomyakov.andrey () gmail com> 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