I have a rack that I'm rapidly filling up and am planning to migrate to a new hardware base. This prevents me with some technical challenges that I need to solve. I am not that up-to-date or familiar with rack/datacom products offered by vendors so I figured I would explain my situation here in hope I can get some insight.

So, without further a due, here is the problem in a nutshell.

The Backstory:
I have an enclosed rack that is 46-ish U (it's a weird rack, but I only pay for 44U). The front to back depth of the rack is up to 30". I have these servers that are 1U 19" Rackmount but only 9.8" deep. Other pertinent pieces of the story are four 48-port switches with 18"-depth and 4 20-outlet 0U PDU's (power strips) with 3-foot IEC computer cords..

The Plan:
I am going to re-locate the rails, and set the rail depth to 26" (2" from door to rail in front and back). I am then going to mount my 1U 19" 9.8"-depth servers in the front AND back of this rack. The four 48-port switches will be mounted with 2 on each side at the bottom. Since the switches are too long to be mounted with anything behind them they will be mounted with one facing the front, then the next U above that will face the back, and so on for the 4 switches (Stacked on top of each other). There will be a 1U horizontal wire management unit bolted behind each switch to cover the hole and provide support for the switch that is above or below it. The 0U PDU's will be bolted in the 6" or so of air-space between the servers and there will be a 3-foot power cord that plugs the server in.


The Problem:
All of these small 1U Servers have front-mounted ports with the exception of the power in the back. I am trying to find some sort of a vertical cable management for all the network cables this rack will have. Each server will have two Cat5 patch cables with each one running to one of the switches. Maybe some kind of an offset 1U cable ring that I can mount every 4U or so over the brackets of the servers. Keep in mind that this is in a colo-center so having wire management that clips on the outside of a rack wont work. The doors also need to be able to be shut and locked.

The rack is intentionally populated from bottom to top to make sure that all of those 84 servers have an air-column that is a straight-shot up (convection principle). There is also going to be a vented tile put under the cabinet as well as 4 120mm high-CFM muffin fans mounted in the top-plate of the cabinet. For those who are curious each one of those servers represent 150 phone lines of capacity. The rack will have 80-amps of service (four 20-amp circuits). The need to keep things neat and serviceable is paramount.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words I drew up something quick and dirty. Here it is: [Linked Image from azrael.crashsys.com]