The first time we looked at this condo that we ended up buying, I looked at
the cupboard under the stairs, and could visualise a small 19 inch rack in
the lower part of it, with all of my computer gear in it.
When we got structured cabling installed, I had the CAT-6 cabling terminated
onto a basic 19 inch patch panel, with the intent of mounting this in a
rack.
Then it became a case of trying to find a rack.
My favourite junk shop, Weird
Stuff, didn't have anything that wasn't full height, so I started
looking around online.
There's certainly a lot of variance in price. I settled on a 26U
Intellinet rack from New Tech, because based on the dimensions on the
website, it would fit in the space I had in mind.
When we assembled it, it became obvious that the dimensions quoted were the
inside dimensions and not the outside dimensions, and it was about 4
centimetres too tall. In hindsight, I should have figured that out. 26 x
1.75 is 45.5.
This is where I must give a shout out to New Tech. Sarah called them up,
explained the situation, and they agreed to take the rack back, and sent us
some shipping labels to ship it back.
We managed to find a more simple rack, a 20U
Middle Atlantic, which arrived today, and was significantly easier to
put together. The only downside: no rear mounting holes. I don't think it'll
be a huge problem, though. All I'm planning on mounting in the immediate
future are the patch panel, some sort of cable management, a Catalyst
switch, and a power strip. At some point in the future, once we stop
spending money hand over fist, I'll look at getting a rack mountable server
to replace the hodge podge of computers I'm currently running.
What I wish we'd discovered about two days ago, was the Lack Rack. This would have been
perfect (and so much cheaper).