StarTech 42U Rack Cabinet Make For Nice Low-Cost, Rackmount Setups

In the process of building our new open-source, Linux benchmarking test farm the server racks I settled for are the StarTech.com 42U rack cabinets. I've bought three of these StarTech.com 42U (4POSTRACK42) racks in the past few weeks and have been happy with their quality for low-price and it includes casters, levelers, and cable management hooks.

The new open-source Linux automated benchmarking farm powered by OpenBenchmarking.org, the Phoronix Test Suite, and Phoromatic is almost fully operational... It's been a long process going from the old non-rack-mounted environment to the construction of the new server room. I'll save more notes and details for another article though you can see the before pictures from an earlier article for now.

One minor issue encountered is that the packaging the StarTech.com racks arrived each time from NewEgg was quite poor with the ends of the cardboard packaging being ripped, but no contents were missing nor were any of the rails scratched or damaged. Assembling the racks were very easy and ended up being a task that Fatima could easily take care of.

After buying the first StarTech 42U rack a few weeks ago, I was pleased with the quality of the unit while costing just about $250 USD (or about $280 when including tax and shipping). I then bought a second StarTech.com 4POSTRACK42 and in now finishing up some of the final systems in the farm, this week I bought the third and final (for now) 42U rack.