Acoustic Server Cabinets and Soundproof Racks

If your cabinets are only partially populated and have perforated ventilation holes in the front and rear, you may not need additional cooling fan kits. Server manufacturers typically recommend a minimum perforation factor for the doors of the cabinets that would be used to house their servers and this is typically from 63% upwards; to allow adequate air flow from front to rear.

Server racks are designed for front air intake and rear cabinet exit. Cool or air conditioned air should be drawn into the front of the rack by fans within the servers themselves or within the server racks and this then exits as warm air out of the rear of the cabinet. In a data hall server racks are typically positioned in rows and the rows positioned so that the fronts face each to optimise cool air and hot air flows. This is a basic for of hot-aisle/cold-aisle containment. The server racks may themselves be within a separate containment known as a hot-aisle/cold-aisle container. For some server racks we can also offer rear cooling doors to help collect the hot exhaust air. The cooling doors fit onto the rear of the cabinets and use chilled water pipes within the rear door. We can also supply additional cabinet fans for extra cooling capacity.

We can supply either completely assembled cabinets or semi-knock down kits to allow for ease of transportation and logistics on-site. Our logistics team will follow the project plan (previously agreed) to deliver your server racks and enclosures to site and position them. Where the cabinets are supplied as semi-knock down kits, our installations team can assemble these and move into position for you.

Most server rack cabinets support up to 300Kg of internal weight. This will depend on the type of cabinet and its height (measure in ‘U’) and whether the rack cabinet itself is designed for light or heavy-usage.

A server rack is a frame into which 19inch rackmount servers, storage and associated networking devices are mounted or ‘rack mounted’. The frame may be 2 or 4-pillar in design. Equipment suitable for a server rack is termed ‘rack mount’ or designed for ‘rack mounting’. A server rack with side panels and a front and rear door assembly can be called a server cabinet. The front door may be solid metal, perforated hex mesh or glass. The rear door is typically solid or perforated hex mesh. The doors and side panels do not just make the server cabinet more secure but also assist air flow management. Server racks and cabinets are defined by their height in ‘U’ where 1U=45mm and their width and depth with typical sizes being 600, 800, 1000 and 1200mm.

This depends on its construction and the grade of steel used. We show the maximum loading for each cabinet on its product page. A free standing 42U 600×600 cabinet will hold up to 75kg and a data centre cabinet 42U 600×1200 will hold up to 1000kg. The weight holdings are based on the castor set supplied as standard. We can also upgrade the castors supplied to heavy duty or extra heavy duty castors. The change in castors will add to the overall height of the cabinet.

The leadtime runs from approximately 5-7 days as most of our cabinets are made to order. Special builds can take longer and include acoustic (10 days), external cabinets (15 days) and air conditioned cabinets (15 days). It all depends on the loading going through the factory at the time of order. Some cabinets may be available quicker, if we are given a specific date to work to and have cabinets built ahead of schedule. Rack accessories are generally available on a quicker availability of 1-2 days.

SRE has a long-standing relationship with Orion who make the SRE range of racks and cabinets. We also provide additional rack services including onsite positioning and flatpack builds, and clients can choose a range of suitable accessories and products form their racks including rackmount UPS, PDUs, remote reboot switches, KVM and environmental monitoring devices. Other manufacturers we work with include ACPC, Eaton, Prism, Rittal, Schneider, Vertiv and others.