The company I just started working for about a month ago is redoing the entire network infrastructure. They have purchased several Dell PowerEdge 1850 servers. Some of these servers will be connecting to some SCSI RAID arrays. The problem is that these servers are so damn long that they won’t fit into the rack and allow us to close the rack doors with the SCSI cables attached.
Does anyone know of a company I can contact to check into having some custom made L-shaped SCSI adapters made so that the cables will point straight down rather than hang out the back of the servers? I have tried Google and other search engines and have come up dry for 3 days straight. Any leads would be appreciated.
Just a thought from the opposite direction…Would it really be a problem to leave the rack doors open? Or remove the doors from the rear of the rack? This would certainly be a cheaper solution than having a bunch of custom cables built. That would probably help to reduce heat buildup as well.
Unfortunately that isn’t an option since the racks are located at the data center hosted by AT&T rather than at our HQ. Since the racks are off site we can’t leave them unsecured.
I was about to say “Inmac” as they’ve been around for decades, but they seem to be only in the UK now.
I did find someone that makes custom cables for racks and data centers. There’s certainly more than just them.
Big servers in small racks can’t be a unique problem. Are the current cables justthismuch too long? Could you noodge the server forward in the rack with some spacers under its ears so it’s not fully in the rack?
The racks at the data center has pretty much zero wiggle room with these new servers. Sliding them forward isn’t really an option. The SCSI cables we have hang off the back of the server about 1.5 inches too long with the front of the server sitting flush with the front door.
I’ll check out your link and thanks for the responses. I can’t believe I’m having this hard of a time finding these adapters.
When I was employed by MicroWarehouse they bought a custom cable company called NUDATA. I see they still exist at www.nudata.com and still make custom cables so you may want to contact them.
Well, thanks for all the help guys. I have been officially told by 3 seperate custom cable companies that what I want does not exist and is impossible to make.
Good thing they ordered these servers before I was hired on. It’s not my ass in the fire over this.
I 2nd trying Blackbox. We order computer equipment and accessories all the time and when we can’t find something through our regular vendors, we go to Blackbox and they always seem to be able to get us what we need.
I’m not a hardware guy, so I apologize if I am way off (and I may be since others have already made suggestions for custom cables).
Could you not use the ribbon connectors that are used internally? Those things are low profile and (I would guess) cheap since you can pop the plastic connectors on to the ribbon for whatever length you need. The connectors wouldn’t have to be the robust cabling with the screws on the connector and the thick round cord since you will be locking up the equipment anyway.
I guess I am suggesting making your own custom cables on site. Surely there must be connectors for the external SCSI port?
Looking at the above links, the internal ribbon cables are the ones that I am thinking of.
This won’t really work since it is a different type of connection at the array end of the cable. If we tried to make a custom cable that didn’t use the thumb screws then the weight of the cable used to connect it to the array would pull it off of the internal SCSI card on the back of the server. The cord to attach it to the array is very thick, heavy, and is 12’ long. That’s a lot of weight to support without the thumbscrews. I also don’t know if your solution would bottleneck the communitcations with the array. With the current cable attached we get about 260 MB per second throughput (bursting) communications with the array. Since this will be their main DB they are really concerned with throughput. I’m not a DBA, just a lowly network/systems engineer, so I just get it working and let them iron out the details.
I think I found a solution that will work though. I found some after market doors for our racks that will add about 2.5 inches to the interal space. I am going to pitch this idea to my boss and let him make the decision.