Most people here are completely missing the point. It's a $4.99 coffee table, available at every Ikea worldwide. You're telling me you shouldn't put your "high-value hardware" inside a four dollar and ninety nine cent coffee table? Wow, I'm super surprised!<p>It is helpful for a lot of people though. I know a handful of people myself who have no rack whatsoever, just putting the unit on the floor or on a desk. For them, this is a massive upgrade that costs less than a sandwich, looks nice, and boosts airflow.<p>Is it marginally more dangerous than spending a ridiculous amount of money on a rack? Sure. Did Ikea specifically design these as server racks? Obviously not. It's a hack. We're on Hacker News.
This reminds me of another wood rack.<p>When we first setup the college's server room, we really couldn't afford proper server racks. The carpentry program decided they weren't really that tough to build. They took all the measurements and specs for size and where the holes had to be and went off and said they would get the job done.<p>So, I showed up to install the new servers and gazed upon beautiful oak server racks.<p>It was quite functional, but did bring up and issue that LackRack owners might take into consideration: "don't forget to do proper grounding". Fortunately, the school's electrician knew his business and did his part.<p>I do admit it looked better and was easier to use than the current dull, commercially bought one in the building we later moved to. After all these years, I sometimes miss the old one, but I would have probably gone steampunk on it and that can be bad. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA</a>
I used to work IT for a somewhat large fan convention. For all the servers and switches we had to roll in for our needs (registration, store, etc), I build a wooden rack [0] [1] that rolled on casters. We could prep everything before loading in, and then we got there it was literally roll it in and start everything up.<p>Couple years ago I built another one for a friend [2] that we mounted on a wall in his basement.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.robpeck.com/2008/01/diy-19-rolling-rack/" rel="nofollow">http://www.robpeck.com/2008/01/diy-19-rolling-rack/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/codelemur/albums/72157603804812692" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/codelemur/albums/7215760380481...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://twitter.com/codelemur/status/576766147342655488" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/codelemur/status/576766147342655488</a>
Also works very well as a 3D printer enclosure<p><a href="http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1843235" rel="nofollow">http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1843235</a>
That is cool, but personally, I would just buy a rack.<p>I purchased 3 new 42U (for the unfamiliar, that's roughly 6'6") 4-post racks locally last week at a cost of $450 CAD each plus another $100 CAD for delivery (dude with a truck, not a big courier). Fully enclosed, fans on the top, 1 movable shelf, castors and a (albeit terrible) PDU. I bet I could find something similar in the realm of $100-250 CAD at a smaller size with similar features. They're not the greatest but they're definitely better than an Ikea coffee table.<p>There are decent cheap racks out there, it's not like you're forced to buy either a APC NetShelter or a coffee table.
Anyone know of some reports on how well the hollow-legged models actually work? The page has a tiny section about this and suggests using some type of anchor (it says "cavity plug", but the example link redirects to the vendor's homepage and searches suggest "cavity plug" to be a hydraulic component, so I suspect a translation issue), but I'd be worried that it would tear out with so little surface area to spread the load over.
I just bought a few of these for my servers, but they don't fit. I suspect that Ikea may have changed the dimensions of the product since this page first went up.
Okay, is it bad that from the blurry photo I still instantly knew the switch is a BayStack 350?<p>19" telco racks are pretty cheap in Silicon Valley.