A Trend Toward Taller Data Center Server Racks
Rodger Baldwin, Sales Manager at RackSolutions recently spoke with serverLIFT about the taller rack trend sweeping the data center industry. Rodger has been working in the racking and mounting industry for 17 years now. When asked for his thoughts about the shift towards taller racks, he responded:
“A data center manager hears this question often: “How can we safely expand IT operations without having to move to a new facility?” One of the easiest and most cost-effective answers appears to be to move upward.
The 42U rack is a data center industry standard, but in the next few years, we expect server rack dimensions to change. As data racks become more affordable, they are also getting taller. A recent Global Data Center Rack Market report shows shipments of 48U racks have already well outpaced 42U racks, and data center rack units as tall as 51U show strong sales growth. Intel put in 60U racks at their Santa Clara data center a few years back. They went from 25,000 square feet supporting 5 megawatts to 5,000 square feet for the same amount of support.
Here at RackSolutions, data center product design and custom product design is our specialty. We’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. Our primary concern—far beyond what’s trendy—is in the creation of a data center rack that will make sense for you, the customer.
The source of our inspiration often comes directly from our clients and their needs.Any innovation that increases server capacity while still allowing access to power and cooling systems is going to be of interest to us. We are also responding to concerns regarding the smartest usage of available space. That’s why we began creating custom racks far taller than the industry standard.”
Rodger continues on the subject, giving pros and cons of having taller racks, in the full article published by serverLIFT.
Read the full article here!
