Securing 42U rack on wheels to wall?

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RonRN18

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Nov 29, 2019
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I plan on purchasing a 42U rack with wheels on the bottom, to allow it to normally sit in a corner of my hobby room, and plan on giving all the cables extending from it, several feet of slack to allow moving the rack out to facilitate physical maintenance. I currently have a Dell R710 and a home-built 4U server with 24 hard drives in it. These are my two largest/heaviest devices that will go in this rack, but there will be several other smaller items in the rack as well, leaving ample room for growth. My question is whether the weight and distribution on wheels will be stable enough or do I need to put some anchors into studs in the walls that secure the rack there when NOT being physically serviced? I am guessing that for safety purposes, I'll need to put the heavyweight items near the lower portion of the rack with the lightest weight up higher. Any suggestions?
 

John Piontkowski

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Dec 1, 2019
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as long as your floor is reasonably level, you should not need to anchor the rack (unless you live in an earthquake area).
Load the rack from the bottom up, at least for heavy things, its ok if you put something like a switch at the top
 

RonRN18

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Nov 29, 2019
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as long as your floor is reasonably level, you should not need to anchor the rack (unless you live in an earthquake area).
Load the rack from the bottom up, at least for heavy things, its ok if you put something like a switch at the top
This will be on a level concrete floor of a garage (home, not a business) and is in California, but is relatively lower risk than many other locations. It isn't impossible for an earthquake but the local region has barely felt anything for decades. My hobby room will be in a detached garage/shop area. If I do decide to anchor it, can someone point me to where/how to find such anchoring systems?
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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IMHO, You need to install\utilize this with the plan of never moving it.

I think you're under estimating the total weight from even 1\2 full rack to think you're going to slide it multiple feet away let alone to work on the rack every time. I think you'll quickly find yourself leaving it accessible that is unless I'm not picturing this heavy-duty rack on HD casters, meant to easily roll :D

Do you have pics\info on the rack on "wheels" ? Maybe if we had more specs we'd be able to provide more info.

As far as securing it, depends how it's setup with your wall(s). But I would drill a stud, use an eye bolt and then use some bolts in secure places on the rack, and use a cable to secure it. You can DIY this or buy off the shelf 'earthquake anchors' from home depot.
 
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RonRN18

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Nov 29, 2019
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IMHO, You need to install\utilize this with the plan of never moving it.

I think you're under estimating the total weight from even 1\2 full rack to think you're going to slide it multiple feet away let alone to work on the rack every time. I think you'll quickly find yourself leaving it accessible that is unless I'm not picturing this heavy-duty rack on HD casters, meant to easily roll :D

Do you have pics\info on the rack on "wheels" ? Maybe if we had more specs we'd be able to provide more info.

As far as securing it, depends how it's setup with your wall(s). But I would drill a stud, use an eye bolt and then use some bolts in secure places on the rack, and use a cable to secure it. You can DIY this or buy off the shelf 'earthquake anchors' from home depot.
The rack I'm looking at (have not purchased yet, but contemplating) is on Amazon... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HVKOPBW. It is 42U 4-post open rack. I don't really plan on moving it much, I just may need to move it occasionally. At the moment, I have two physical servers. One is a Dell R710 (2u) while the other is built into a Norco RPC-4220 enclosure (4U) currently with 16 out of 20 hot-swap bays filled with hard drives. I then have a patch panel and a Dell PowerConnect 5448 switch. I also have a 1U electrical power strip. In my current house, I have a home-built wooden rack that houses all of this. I have small casters on the bottom of this rack and have no issues moving it about on its hardwood floor. I kind of doubt that a purpose-built metal rack with castors would be more difficult to move than a home-built wooden piece of furniture with cheap Home Depot castors that weighs significantly more.

My original question was asked because I had not seen anything made for securing such a rack to the wall, which I found odd. I was wondering if my thought for securing it to the wall was overkill, as I had not seen any purpose-built wall-securing hardware. I was contemplating jerry-rigging something up.
 

Terry Wallace

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Aug 13, 2018
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Thats because most racks are designed for service from both front and back and they sit side by side, so no walls to secure to. If its not a rolling rack, it's usually just sitting on steel feet.. or occasionally bolted to the concrete floor at the bottom.
A half loaded decent rack weights north of 300 lbs easily. Its not going to roll around unless you push it.
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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I may be wrong but I believe those are meant to move the rack empty, and the feet are meant to take the load when loaded.

That also will not roll with 300lbs easily it will need to be forced with those tiny wheels, and since that rack is just a carrier of hardware and not a protective rack there's not much structure there to make it rigid.... in that regard, the more hardware with rails the more rigid, but that kind of goes against keeping it mobile and light :D

I want to think my barebones rack (similar to yours) that's only 1\2 tall with rails to capacity (mostly 2U sized rails) empty otherwise, no sides, tops, or bottom plates, or angled supports weighed around 115lbs. I made the mistake of moving it with all the rails ;) it was slow going down stairs, ha! My fullsize APC rack with rollers similar to the one you pictured takes a slam of the shoulder to roll on anything but the most perfectly clean and smooth datacenter floor :D

I personally would mount it to always have access to front\back on legs not wheels\rollers. Then either home depot or DIY earthquake strap.
 
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Blinky 42

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Aug 6, 2015
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In general you want to have access to the front and back of a rack for servicing (which you probably suspect by asking the question ;) )
If you only have 6U of servers then the weight won't be too bad and you can probably move it around using those casters, but I wouldn't set it up that way. If you need to move it, get a smaller mobile rack if you only have 6U of servers for it. If go with a full height rack and you put weight higher up in the rack or fill it up - Don't move it. It will tip over and squish you. Also don't move it alone.
 
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