Rack Myths Busted

Who needs an 800kg capacity server rack?

A number of rack manufacturers rate their racks at 800kg load capacity, and suggest you need to worry about rack strength!

Who are they kidding?

We challenge anyone to send us a list of commercially available equipment, which will both physically fit into a standard 42U high 19” rack, and which will weigh anywhere near this amount.

Completely filling a rack e.g. with 42 x 1 U servers, or with 7 x 6 U blade servers requires a load rating of about 400kg at the most.

The heaviest equipment we've seen in racks are UPS battery packs. If you were to completely fill a 42U rack with “compact” UPS batteries, for example 8 x 6kVA battery packs (at 5U each), which is the maximum you can fit, the total load would be less than 500kg. In the “real” world, a UPS rated at 48 kVA would be supplied in a custom cabinet, and even then, a complete 80 kVA system with a 10m min run time, weighs under 300kg (including the cabinet).

SRA’s standard commercial grade racks have a fully welded frame, and have been designed to carry any load you can physically fit into the rack. If you could fit it, we could show you a rack on caster loaded to 800kg. To test our design, we took a stock rack with standard, low profile casters and filled it with 30 x 24kg concrete pavers, on standard shelves – a 720kg load, not including the weight of the rack.

Rack load rating is clearly a non-event!

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