So, it sounds obvious. You buy a bunch of kit, you drag it into the data hall, you unpack it, rack it and cable it.
Woah.
Firstly, kit comes in boxes made of corrugated cardboard. This is the cheapest packaging they can get, and it’s full of fibre and dust. Not just the dust in the board itself: chance are, those boxes have been sitting in storage, in and out of shipping containers, hanging around in loading bays, and they will have picked up a pile of grime and dust on the way. Do you really want that getting into your fans and power supplies?
Secondly, once you’ve unpacked it, there will inevitably be bits you don’t need. Styrofoam, the inevitable EULA, little bags of fixing screws, console cables, and so on. It’s not quite as bad as it used to be, as companies have realised that 99% of the time this stuff is going straight in the bin. But it’s still stuff that will clutter up your data hall if you let it.
I mentioned fixing screws above. Often you’ll need to do some assembly before you can rack your shiny new kit. Server vendors like Dell tend to use tool-less installation, where mounting rails simply clip into the racks and servers drop into recesses in the rails. Network equipment vendors… not so much. There are usually rack mounting ears or rails that need to be fixed to the equipment, and these are usually fixed with little screws (M2, M3 sort of size). And these are exactly the right size to fall into floor air ducts or disappear into the gaps under racks.
So, best practice is to have a separate ‘build room’ where you can unpack equipment, inspect it, fit any mounting rails and then – only then – move the kit into the data hall.
What’s the most ridiculous bit of equipment packaging you’ve ever seen? Let us know in the comments!
