i am a superior tool-wielding hominid

[rone]

Today i was at my company's colocation cage.  The task set before me and my coworker was to rack two Sun Fire 445 servers.

The Problem
The rails are one and one-third rack units high.  There are two holes on top and bottom, and two pins in the middle.  The idea is that the holes allow the rails to be screwed in, and the pins align directly with the two unused screw holes in between.

In practice, you can see a bend at the end of the rail.  This causes the rail to not allow the pins to align with the holes.  Thus, the rail is effectively useless.

The Solution

I managed to procure a hammer at my favorite restaurant, Hunan Taste, where my coworker and i had lunch.  It was either that or attempt to unbend the cheap metal rail with a pair of vise grips.

The Result

Once again, a judicious and clever application of violence saves the day.

Comments

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

Yep! Sun rails are designed for Sun racks, HP rails are designed for HP racks; the usual deal. Fortunately the Rittal racks we use (when we don't use vendor racks) are pretty tolerant.

I never, ever go to a machine room without a hammer. I have an office in our main facility which I pretty much just use a secure lockup for tools and parts. Hammers: 1 large ball peen, 1 small ball peen, 2 panel beating hammers, a small sledge and a couple of rubber mallets.

Now, those 445s look pretty shiny, but are those disk brackets incompatible with spuds? Because if they are, Sun are being a pain in the arse.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I have several E250s, Sunfire V1s, Origin300s (SGI), and PE2[6|8]50s (Dell) all in the same rack and no hardware modification was required. Any 19" rack with properly spaced rails should accomodate just about anything (the Dells required an adapter kit since this rack has 10-32 drilled and tapped holes up the rails and the standard Dell expects square holes. The adapter kit was $9 from Dell). The Suns and SGIs went in with zero modification.

[ltempt.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've got an E250, a v210, a T105, two 2600 routers, a couple of 2900 series switches, an HP FCAL JBOD, an HP tape library, an A1000, two patch panels and a pair of fibre hubs (and fibre management trays) in an early vintage DEC rack right here, all racked properly. A lot of it was fiddly but not impossible.

Standard (ha!) racks have square holes and one uses captive nuts. That gives you the best chance of actually getting everything to screw in. HP racks have different spacing to everyone else so even if you get everything in you'll have gaps and it won't look pretty (and you'll waste space).

Next move is to dump this DEC rack and replace it with the new StorEdge that I've had sitting around for the last year. It'll be neater and have decent power management.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

The worst rack I've dealt with yet is one of our relay racks that wasn't fucking leveled when it was installed. The rack shelves for the Matrix 5000 are 11U each (one for the rectifier, one for the battery pack) and take 7 screws on each side. The have damn near zero vertical tolerance. That was...less than fun.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Spuds?

[gallifreyan.livejournal.com]

Spuds are the standard Sun drive brackets, as seen in Ultra 1, Ultra 2, Multipacks, and various other places.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Aha, thanks.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

They use 2.5" drives, not the old 3.5" drives. They're really sleek and cute, but, yes, not the same enclosure as the old spuds, for obvious reasons.