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.and...@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
