Server rack rails too expensive. What is poor-man's diy options?

[DrStein99]

I have 8 rack servers laying on shelves now and this is getting out of hand. I can afford a full height rack cabinet from craigslist that people are basically throwing away. Unfortunately, the rack-rails that I have to buy specific for each server cost at a bare minimum around $65 each - some of them are $80+. The whole cost for me to buy all the rails for all my servers, approaches $500. (For $500 I would just buy another server to stack on my shelves).

Is there any other options, are there poor-man's universal rack rails - like somebody took these drawer slides and put the brackets on them with holes or solid for me to drill my own whever they need to go? Or just a premade shelf to bolt into a cabinet, to lay each different server on ? The ones I seen so far cost just about the same as what it cost me to get the true ones designed for the servers.

Anyone have ideas or been through this before ?

 

[K D]

You can get something like this for about 30 bucks

NavePoint Universal 1U Rack Mount 4-Post Shelf Rail Dell Compaq IBM HP APC - 33.5" deep https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XXDJASY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_-QI1AbY09Q5AH

 

[am4593]

I would recommend something like the APC 0M-756H rails brackets instead of those navepoint ones. I own both. The navepoint ones are flimsy, lightweight and cheep. They are black though. These APC ones are actually designed for a weight of rackmount UPS systems. They're very strong and you can usually get them on ebay for around 20$ because there are so many of them on ebay. These both are non sliding though, just 0U shelfs

 

[Magnet]

The APC ones are monsters, designed for a 100LBs of batteries. Price is right for ones on ebay!

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Is there any other options, are there poor-man's universal rack rails - like somebody took these drawer slides and put the brackets on them with holes or solid for me to drill my own whever they need to go? Or just a premade shelf to bolt into a cabinet, to lay each different server on ? The ones I seen so far cost just about the same as what it cost me to get the true ones designed for the servers.

Do you need slides, or would static mounting do? As long as you have rack ears, you should be able to mount your equipment at the front. All you need is some way to support it at the back, like this:

The gold piece shown in the picture is rather expensive, but you should be able to get some angle metal at your local big-box store and drill 2 holes in it to attach it to the rack. Even 3/8" aluminum should work (as long as you don't get the thinnest stuff), since most pressure will be at the sides near where the angle is bolted to the rack, not in the middle where the material is weakest.

You just need to adjust the front-to-back spacing of the vertical rack rails to make sure you have enough overhang in the back on each of your devices. You can't just slide something out, as it will fall off the back support piece and drop, and you can't stack equipment on top of each other without leaving a gap for the horizontal bars.

 

[pcmoore]

I'm in a similar situation: a reclaimed surplus store rack with oddball hardware, most without proper rails. My solution was to pick up some aluminum angle bar at my local hardware store and mount it in the rack using the holes on the *side* of the rack (I bought a pack of rack nuts and screws off Amazon fairly cheap). Just like the NavePoint universal rails mentioned above, you can slide the systems in/out without fear of dropping; the only catch is that depending on the chassis you may need to invert the bar stock and potentially lose 1U above/below the system. If you use reasonably sized bar stock you can hold a fair amount of weight; I've used it to hold large 4U systems and 2U APC UPS units without any problems.

As a bonus, you can made a poor man's sliding shelf with aluminum C channel and appropriately sized plywood (thickness < channel width). All you need to do is mount the C channel to the rack the same way as the angle bar (using the mounting holes on the *side* of the rack).

 

[laserpaddy]

Kreg tools has some interesting things -requires imagination...
Kreg Workspace Solutions - Kreg Tool Company

Also under drawer rails are tuff..rockler is great ive used them and kreg

Drawer Slides at Rockler: Ball Bearing, Euro, Undermount Drawer Slides

and T-slot board- check it out I have been thinking about it for a while

 

[fmatthew5876]

I used this when I had a Norco a long time ago. The chassis was too wide and the rack too thin that it was impossible to use rails. This held up just fine 10 3.5 hhd's inside.

4 Post Adjustable Rack Rails