The server cabinet, which is also commonly called as an enclosed server rack, has a removable rear and front doors. The side panels and the adjustable vertical mounting rails are also included. The rack server cabinet that is being used in standard data center has a height of of 42U or 73.5 inches high. For the majority of server racks, these cabinets consist of 24 inches in width and they are 36 inches deep. Recently, the server cabinets have been popular across companies that has data centers and also server rooms.

A network cabinet is generally being used for several routers, switches, fiber patch panels as well as equipment being used for networking. For the majority of cases, the network cabinet is shallower compared to its server cabinet. They are generally less than 31 inches when it comes to deep measurement. There are times that it consists of a glass or it has a strong plastic front door. There is more to this also. The network cabinet commonly does not have perforated enclosures.

These type of cabinets are more popular because of the following primary reasons:

1. Added security – compared to the insecure rack, the server rack cabinet gives added protection. The cabinets can be easily locked to avoid other visitors or unauthorized people to gain access to the equipment.
2. Protection for Cables – together with the door and other side panels, the cables inside the server rack cabinet has much more less access compared to the outside air. This now helps in preservation of the cables in order to decrease the risk of cable damage because of some contaminants.
3. Better filtration of air – the server cabinets can also be utilized by engineers to be able to provide a wide variety of air segregation or filtration strategies. For example, this can be used when there is a cold or hot aisle containment and cabinet-level type of containment.

With this in mind, there also comes some great disadvantages:

1. High Price – unlike to the server rack, this cabinet is greatly more expensive.
2. Cannot be accessed easily – because of some physical restrictions for this cabinet, it usually takes more time to do a manual operation or even do system maintenance of the equipment being housed inside the cabinet.

When a design engineer is building a data center, in deciding what type of server rack or cabinet to be used – and even network rack & cabinet – to use should be the top priority. The right one should be able to meet some of the installation demands and it can help you to greatly improve the power protection needed, including the cooling, cable management, and also the physical security.

The majority of the server rack enclosure manufacturers will allow you to be able to select across several options, so that the server rack for your engineering project can meet the specific requirements where it will be installed (depending on the environment.) There are common areas where the engineer should be able to select options from.

1. Shelving: the majority of the manufacturers can offer numerous options for your server rack shelves. This include some of adjustable or fixed server shelves that comes with four-point mounting. It also includes some keyboard shelves that has 2-point mounting. It is slightly vented, very durable, and has cantilever shelves. They also have media shelves. The project engineer should be able to effectively choose a server rack wit the depth of 6 inches that is lesser than the overall depth of the server rack. Once you have a server rack that is 30-inch deep cabinet, you should be able to effectively choose a shelf with a depth of 24 inches.
2. Top and Side Panels: these panels are designed to give equipment protection from the foreign materials. The feature options that are included are the perforated slots for added ventilation, grommet holes designed to accommodate the supplementary cable management pathways, and there is also an option to mount the exhaust fans. The existing side panels gives security and they are most often available in wide variety of choices: solid fixed, solid removable, and solid that has vents included.
3. Mounting rails: these are the most commonly used racks that comes with two different sets of mounting rails. In addition to this, the additional rail sets can be bought in order for it to accommodate the different depths in order to start rack loading. The majority of the manufacturers will allow the usage of these from either Universal Mounting Rails or EIA standard rails.
4. Universal rails: they will be able to support the 19” EIA width rackmount including the networking equipment, and almost all of the server equipment. The EIA standard mounting rails will be able to support the 19” EIA width rackmount and also the additional networking equipment to be able to support the other manufacturers’ rack mounting equipment.

In addition to tis, whether the rails consist of square or tapped holes, the majority of the mounting rails should be able to comply with the ANSI/EIA-310-D standard (1992). The majority of the manufacturers of server rack recommends to purchase racks with rails that has square holes and cage nuts. Today, most of the off-the-shelf rack models are being used for rails that has square holes.