RACKMOUNT SOLUTIONS. 1/7/2013 AcoustiQuiet /UCoustic User Guide. The AcoustiQuiet /UCoustic User Guide provides useful

Transcription

1 RACKMOUNT SOLUTIONS 1/7/2013 AcoustiQuiet /UCoustic User Guide The AcoustiQuiet /UCoustic User Guide provides useful hints, tips and advice to help maximize the thermal and acoustic properties of the cabinets.

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3 Rackmount Solutions A C O U S T I Q U I E T / U C O U S T I C U S E R G U I D E Thank you for choosing Rackmount Solutions! The following guide will help you to take full advantage of all of the features and capabilities of your AcoustiQuiet /UCoustic cabinet. It s broken down into two, basic areas Environmental Considerations and Populating the Rack. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS Although our AcoustiQuiet /UCoustic cabinets can be used in almost any environment, we recommend: Placement in rooms of reasonable size to allow for heat dissipation. The size of the room required to dissipate heat is, of course, based on the amount of heat generated within the cabinet. If you are unsure that your room is large enough, please contact Rackmount Solutions. We ll be happy to answer any of your questions. The cabinet should not be placed close to external heat sources such as heaters, warm air vents, or in direct sunlight. External heat can affect the operating temperatures of the equipment inside. Page 2

4 Additional dedicated air conditioning is usually not required. However, if the equipment within the cabinet generates a significant amount of heat, it may be recommended. Again, please contact us if you have any questions regarding your specific implementation. Some of our larger cabinets are very heavy (up to 660 pounds). Please ensure that the floor can support this weight. If you are in doubt, we offer a variety of plinth systems and load spreaders to help distribute the weight. The cabinets should be placed in a reasonably dust-free environment. The UCoustic series has optional dust filters that can be ordered separately. If you need a filter, please contact us. In most cases, a cabinet can be placed close to a wall or in the corner of a room. However, wherever air is exiting the cabinet, we recommend a gap of 3-4 inches. For example: the AcoustiQuiet Mini Cab should not be pushed rear-first against a wall. The UCoustic should not have a desk, shelf, or ceiling within 4 inches of the rear of the cabinet. POPULATING THE RACK The contents of every cabinet are always unique. However, for best performance, we recommend: Page 3

5 Placement of equipment that generates the most heat (i.e. servers) at the top of the cabinet (or as close to the cabinet fans as possible). Cooler equipment (i.e. switches) can be mounted lower in the cabinet. Heavy equipment (i.e. UPS units) should be placed at the bottom of the rack to maintain cabinet stability. The goal should be to keep the cabinet from becoming top heavy or unstable. Where possible, each item with fans (servers, switches, firewalls, RAID devices, PBX s, etc.) should have at least 1U of empty space between it and the unit above and below it. This will help prevent overheating of equipment. Spare U s (like the ones left open for heat dissipation), should be filled with blanking panels to ensure that the equipment is drawing new, cool air and not warm, used air that is recirculating within the cabinet. Rackmount Solutions offers acoustically treated blanking panels that can increase noise reduction. Cabling should be neat and kept away from key airflow areas such as equipment fan outlets and cabinet air intakes and fans. Page 4

6 Tower servers can be laid on their sides on a 1U adjustable shelf or in a rack mount kit to improve airflow management. With everything in place, there should be no gaps, holes or open areas that go through to the back of the cabinet. Where possible, use a blanking plate to close open areas. If the gap is small or of an irregular size, it can be filled using a foam brick. When baying acoustic racks, each rack should carry approximately 50 percent of the overall thermal load. For example, it is inefficient to place a bank of servers in one cabinet and switches and patch panels in another. Greater efficiency is gained by placing half the servers and switches in each cabinet. POPULATING THE RACK EXAMPLES In Figure 1, a 24U rack is overheating. The reason is that the gap between the tape drive near the top of the rack and the gaps around the UPS units at the bottom are allowing a free flow of hot air from the back of the cabinet back to the front. Page 5

7 FIGURE 1 OVERHEATING 24U CABINET In addition, three of the servers have been placed adjacent to each other. Therefore, heat is likely to be concentrated at that point. This compounds the heating problem caused by the gaps. Figure 2 below, illustrates a cabinet that has been populated following our guidelines. Note that the servers are well spaced and blanking plates are in position. Page 6

8 FIGURE 2 WELL POPULATED CABINET SIDE VENTING EQUIPMENT Side venting equipment can cause additional cooling challenges. These issues can be managed using a side venting kit (SVK)*, illustrated in Figure 3 below. Side venting kits provide a constant flow of cool air over the intakes of the switches without allowing warm air to enter through the front of the cabinet. Page 7

9 FIGURE 3 SIDE VENTING KIT *Side venting kits available on Ucoustic quiet racks only ABOUT RACKMOUNT SOLUTIONS We re the rack experts! For more than a decade, Rackmount Solutions has preserved space, power, and cost for our more than 75,000 satisfied customers. IT departments have entrusted their computing and communications equipment to our innovative standard and custom solutions. Not everyone needs a quiet rack. To ensure that our customers get the right solution for their specific needs, we also carry a complete line of Page 8

10 racks from Kendall Howard, Middle Atlantic, Great Lakes and Eaton plus the Cruxial series. Our job is to make it easy for our customers to mount their equipment anywhere in anything! If you have any questions regarding our solutions please contact us at: or us at: Information in this document may not apply to every quiet rack configuration or equipment setup. Please consider industry best practices and heat loads when configuring your equipment. Page 9