30 minutes to pull a switch from the box stick ears on it and mount it in the rack seems like a realllllly long time.    I think at tops that portion it that’s a 5-10 minute job if I unbox it at my desk.     I use a drill with the correct toque setting  and a magnetic bit to put them on while it boots on my desk so I can drop a base config on it.

If you are replacing defective switches often enough that this is another issue I think you would have bigger issues than this to address.

Like others said that most switches are in the rack for the very long haul, often in excess of 5 years.   The amount of time required to do the initial install is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

-richey

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+richey.goldberg=gmail.com@nanog.org> on behalf of Andrey Khomyakov <khomyakov.andrey@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, September 24, 2021 at 12:38 PM
To: Nanog <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Rack rails on network equipment

Hi folks,

Happy Friday!

Would you, please, share your thoughts on the following matter?

Back some 5 years ago we pulled the trigger and started phasing out Cisco and Juniper switching products out of our data centers (reasons for that are not quite relevant to the topic). We selected Dell switches in part due to Dell using "quick rails'' (sometimes known as speed rails or toolless rails).  This is where both the switch side rail and the rack side rail just snap in, thus not requiring a screwdriver and hands of the size no bigger than a hamster paw to hold those stupid proprietary screws (lookin at your, cisco) to attach those rails.

We went from taking 16hrs to build a row of compute (from just network equipment racking pov) to maybe 1hr... (we estimated that on average it took us 30 min to rack a switch from cut open the box with Juniper switches to 5 min with Dell switches)

Interesting tidbit is that we actually used to manufacture custom rails for our Juniper EX4500 switches so the switch can be actually inserted from the back of the rack (you know, where most of your server ports are...) and not be blocked by the zero-U PDUs and all the cabling in the rack. Stock rails didn't work at all for us unless we used wider racks, which then, in turn, reduced floor capacity.

As far as I know, Dell is the only switch vendor doing toolless rails so it's a bit of a hardware lock-in from that point of view. 

So ultimately my question to you all is how much do you care about the speed of racking and unracking equipment and do you tell your suppliers that you care? How much does the time it takes to install or replace a switch impact you?

I was having a conversation with a vendor and was pushing hard on the fact that their switches will end up being actually costlier for me long term just because my switch replacement time quadruples at least, thus requiring me to staff more remote hands. Am I overthinking this and artificially limiting myself by excluding vendors who don't ship with toolless rails (which is all of them now except Dell)?

Thanks for your time in advance!

--Andrey