Table of Contents
Many people get curious about their server maintenance and carry out certain operations to make it happen. But the main initiative starts with where these servers are house. The Rack servers by their name are house in a rack with a particular length, width, and depth to fit in the server and enable it to function. Buy server cabinets to keep and protect the server with proper care.
What is Server Cabinet?
Server racks cabinets like a 42U size Server cabinet have the dimensions of 19 inches wide, 4 inches in width, and 36 inches deep considering the industrial standards. These dimensions are adjustable according to the customer requirements of the servers and extra space to use. These cabinets are mostly used to install servers, UPS ES, monitors, or similar equipment.
The Server racks have a perforated front and rear ensuring utmost ventilation for the equipment stored in the rack. A server cabinet offers a safer environment for your servers and manages the heat produced by these servers effectively.
What is Network Cabinet?
When it comes to buying a network cabinet, people often consider it to be similar to the Server cabinet, though there’s a difference between types of equipment housed. Network cabinets usually store equipment like a networking router, patch panels, switches, and other networking accessories.
A Network cabinet is shallower than a Server cabinet with dimensions of 31 inches deep. Network cabinets usually have a glass or a strong plastic front and also don’t have perforated enclosures. The equipment stored in these cabinets does not have the same heat generation as those stored in Server cabinets.
What is the difference between a Server cabinet and a Network cabinet?
So here we will discuss the following points about the difference between server cabinet and network cabinet:
1. Depth
In terms of height, a server rack may be similar to a network rack. But, there may be dissimilarities in terms of depth. Since the server racks cabinets will house longer network equipment, they must be deeper in-depth than the network cabinet.
Network cabinets are used to house routers, patch panels, and other network equipment that is significantly shorter in depth. Therefore, a server rack will take up more space than a network rack cabinet.
2. Airflow
As you already know, network devices do not generate a lot of heat. A server, on the other hand, could produce a huge amount of heat. It is always a good idea to have the heat under control in order to operate the servers at their best capacity. As a result, you can find different ventilation systems on a server rack, such as a perforated door, movable side panels, and so on.
But, in the case of a network rack cabinet, there won’t be a lot of heat generation. That means that air circulation systems do not need to have these types of racks. So, you can find a network rack that is more compact and shallower than a server rack.
3. Design
Server racks will have doors and side panels. Any of them can be lock for further security from outside. And, to allow required ventilation, the front door and the rear panel can come with plenty of holes.
But, generally, network racks do not have perforated doors. Tempered glass or polycarbonate doors come with them. And most of the network cabinet designs don’t have any side panels.
4. Cable Management
A server computer does not come with a lot of cables. It can also be very portable and also hard to do cable management in it.
However, as network rack cabling is likely to include a large number of cables, it will have plenty of features for easy and quick cable management. In that way, you will be able to maintain all of your cables sorted.
Conclusion
Going through the above discussion regarding Server cabinets and Network cabinets, though they have the same function of housing equipment differ in the types of equipment they house. We noticed that Server cabinets are more spacious in dimensions, and used to keep big equipment like servers and monitors whereas Network cabinets are shallower and carry networking equipment like routers or patch panels.
Serverstack never compromises with server quality. We have our solidly built servers placed in the solidly built cabinet to carry your server. So get your Rack server today with the strongly built rack protecting the server and its functions to help you manage huge network connections without any server damage issues.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is a Rack Unit?
The Rack Unit is a measurement unit used to describe the vertical space available in an equipment rack. A ‘U’ is equivalent to 1.75 inches or 4.45cm. Usually, rack-mountable equipment is designed to occupy an integer number of U. The Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) has standardized the dimension.
Q2. What is Network Rack?
A network rack is a metal frame chassis known by many names that hold, stacks, organizes, secures, and protects various hardware devices for computer networks and servers. The term “network” refers to the rack that actually houses this type of hardware.
Q3. What is a White Box Server?
A white box server refers to customized servers, such as Supermicro, which are either designed at home or built by white box suppliers called ODMs (Original Design Manufacturers). The term white box simply means that it is unbranded or generic to the equipment. White box servers are increasingly used by the Open Computer Project (OCP) which was developed by Facebook.
Q4. What is a Relay Rack?
A relay rack is an open server cabinet that consists of only a base, a roof plate, and two side panels. This is useful if the rack itself which only fits in a closed space has to do a lot of work. Since no housing is given in the cabinet, the sound pollution in an open space can be disturbing.