Joe asked today: " Do I even need to spend time wondering about shock-tolerant cabinets, or should I instead be concentrating on finding the right company to wrap the cabinets for shipping, and to do the shipping itself?" Joe, after having done a lot of this I found it was very expensive to find shock proof cabinets and a good air freight shipper. Any shipper of electronic goods will understand the requirements needed to protect their (your) cargo. It is costly for them to have damages occur in shipping which is why a good company will go the extra mile. Cushioned pallet wraps, additional padding and so forth come with the service you purchase. For my company, the bottom line was that it seemed redundant to pay for insurance, which is a must and have the racks built into shockproof cabinets. The cabinets were not needed at the data centers, so we called it overkill and have never had any problems with the company we used. Your stuff is departing from LAX I would imagine. If you need a recommendation or just some names so you can look for yourself, please feel free to contact me off list. I hope this helps everyone a bit. Sincerely, Richard Golodner

On Mon, 6 Apr 2009, Joe Abley wrote:

Anybody here have experience shipping pre-built cabinets, with ~20U of routers and servers installed, connected and tested, to remote sites for deployment?

The idea is to increase the consistency of the deployments by having them all built in one place by the same set of people, and to reduce the amount of time required by warm bodies on-site (bodies that would otherwise have to receive individual components and install/cable them).

The issue you might run into is dealing with pre-racked components that end up getting damaged in transit. I've seen shippers do creative things with forklifts and pallet jacks :( On the flip side, telcos often do this. I know Verizon builds (or at least they did for a long time) racks and cabinets for deployment at customer deployment a central facility, then ships the finished product for installation. In this area (Pittsburgh, PA), the cabinets were built and tested at a Verizon assembly facility in Martinsburg, WV. If you do move ahead with this and do use 4-post cabinets, make sure most of the devices can be secured to both the front and rear posts. That wouldn't apply to things like patch panels, but 1U servers and 1U network devices are often somewhat lacking in terms of sturdy mounting harrdware that's designed to accommodate the rigors of shipping. As for shippers, I don't know if I would trust something as valuable or fragile to a regular LTL freight carrier. You might want to look at someone like FedEx Custom Critical. In my previous life, customers would ship their gear to our data center using them. Not cheap by any stretch... Also, if the source or destination does not have a real loading dock, your shipments will likely be more expensive if the shipper has to use a lift-gate truck.

We've located a few vendors who sell shock-tolerant cabinets, but they're expensive and seem to me to be aimed at people who need to ship a set of equipment frequently (e.g. to support movie shoots, outside broadcasts, etc), rather than people who want to ship just once.

Right. Companies like Calzone Cases, Jan-Al, Penn Fabrication and Hardigg can build cabinets for this purposes but they are designed for stuff that lives 'on the road', such as touring sound equipment.

Do I even need to spend time wondering about shock-tolerant cabinets, or should I instead be concentrating on finding the right company to wrap the cabinets for shipping, and to do the shipping itself?

There are shock-mount pallets and shipping frames that can be used - they often bolt to the bottom of the cabinet and then there is often a 'bumper' for the top of the cabinet and then the whole works is shrink-wrapped together. jms

In a message written on Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 02:46:35PM -0400, Joe Abley wrote:

Anybody here have experience shipping pre-built cabinets, with ~20U of routers and servers installed, connected and tested, to remote sites for deployment?

"shipping", no, "moving" yes. In past lives I've hired the same good folks who you might use to move your house to move entire racks. The major moving companies have teams who have experience with eletronic equipment, including full racks. Any quality 4 post rack with things well secured should be able to travel this way. I've never tried out of range of a truck, in all of my examples it was put on a truck, driven to the destination, and unloaded by the same team of folks. Still, if you don't need it overnight that can be the entire united states... -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Joe Abley <jabley@hopcount.ca> wrote:

Hi all,

Anybody here have experience shipping pre-built cabinets, with ~20U of routers and servers installed, connected and tested, to remote sites for deployment?

I've done this in the past and most recently evaluated it as an option to reduce remote hands requirements for future Icelandic data centers. I prefer the on-site build. There are a lot of gotchas. For example, cabinet heights. Floor loading. Max ceiling height, cable delivery systems, power delivery preferences, cabinet style, etc. In most cabinet inventory facilities the operators ask you to utilize their cabinets which, for some, are turned to cooling and service delivery requirements. Entrance doorways are typically wide, but a 7" cabinet on wheels will usually have to come in on it's side if it's not built or already installed inside the room. Pre-fab cabinets may have to be tipped, twisted, or mangled to get through a door. Depending upon how your gear is mounted internally, you could see your backplanes experience stresses that will not be obviously detectable "initially" as a result of that jousting. Pre fab for 20U in your own cabinet is also doubling the cost of your install in a facility that would sell you 20U of cabinet. That doesn't leave you much room for growth, but if you do your agreements in a manner that allows you to expand and pay as you grow, it may be worth it not to pre fab and eat all 40U in costs. These days, with the limited power available in facilities, you may only get 20U and your growth sideways will require additional cabinets anyhow so growing into your cabinet may not be possible. The idea is to increase the consistency of the deployments by having them

all built in one place by the same set of people, and to reduce the amount of time required by warm bodies on-site (bodies that would otherwise have to receive individual components and install/cable them).

We've located a few vendors who sell shock-tolerant cabinets, but they're expensive and seem to me to be aimed at people who need to ship a set of equipment frequently (e.g. to support movie shoots, outside broadcasts, etc), rather than people who want to ship just once.

The destination in all cases would be a commercial, modern data centre. The equipment would be shipped from LA.

Do I even need to spend time wondering about shock-tolerant cabinets, or should I instead be concentrating on finding the right company to wrap the cabinets for shipping, and to do the shipping itself?

I wasn't able to show a major capex or opex cost savings by pre-fabricating. You are either going to increase the workload of your existing people or hire more to buy the obvious convenience. Either way, probably more expensive for 20U that it may be worth. 1. as-builts designated by the RU 2. physical layer wiring diagram 3. cable run list (optical, fiber, connector type, pots) 4. Bill of materials down to the rack mount kit screws 5. cut view, detailing cabinet details _from the datacenter_. I think that you'll find that you can improve your install experience by (possibly) improving your documentation and standards requirements. Best, Marty -- Martin Hannigan martin@theicelandguy.com p: +16178216079 Power, Network, and Costs Consulting for Iceland Datacenters and Occupants