[Malvern] Rack Mounted Equipment

[Guy Inchbald]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:35:14, Ian Pascoe <ianpascoe at btinternet.com> 
wrote:
>Quick question - if you rack mount computers are the mother boards the same
>as what you'd find in your desktop, or are they specific to the rack
>mounting system you're using?

Desktop-style motherboards meet the ATX standard for where to find 
things like connectors and mounting holes.

As you will by now have gathered, some rackmount computers use ATX 
motherboards, while many others do not.

Major geeks sometimes tell me scornfully that these non-ATX boxes are 
not PC's - because the "IBM-compatible" derived PC specs call for ATX. 
They are "servers" or "hosts" or whatever. I reply that Acorn's Risc PC 
and Apple's old 6800-based Macs were PC's, just not IBM compatible ones. 
So the ATX spec means nothing - and since all those "servers" have 
lovely desktops (or DOS shells or whatever), that makes them PC's too. 
All good fun.

Back on topic, desktop boxes come in just ATX and micro-ATX size cases, 
while rackmount boxes come in anything from 1U (= 1 3/4 in.) up to 
around 12U (= 12 1/4 in.) or even more. The demands of a 1U "blade" 
enclosure are very different from those of a 12U one. Then there are the 
blade systems where a single 19" rack enclosure, say 4U high, packs 
about a dozen small vertical blade hosts.

-- 
Cheers,
Guy