Dell Rackmount Rails

Tekmart Africa offers a wide variety of Dell rack rail kits for mounting various types of equipment including servers, storage arrays, KMM/KVM consoles, routers, and switches.

Equipment racks can come as two post racks or four post racks with either square holes or round holes. Rail kits will need to not only work with the specific system but also either be universal or created specifically for one of these rack types.

These Dell rail kits are designed to be installed in Dell rack enclosures, which have square mounting holes for tool-less installation, and may also be compatible with racks from other vendors, including square-hole, round-hole, and threaded-hole racks.

Note that Dell rail kits with a Rail Identifier code have been designed to be compliant with the Server System Infrastructure (SSI) Specification for Computer Server Cabinet Enclosures & Racks, which specifies a minimum offset distance for return flanges on the rack mounting flanges to allow sufficient room for mounting the rail kits.

The ReadyRails™ II mounting interface supports tool-less installation in 4-post square-hole and unthreaded round-hole racks as well as native support for tooled installation in threaded-hole racks. Note that installing this mounting interface in a square-hole rack allows the bracket to be placed flush against the mounting post, while installation in a round-hole rack results in a slight offset of approximately 6 mm from the mounting post.

The original ReadyRails mounting interface is used for both static and sliding rails, and supports tool-less installation in 4-post square-hole and unthreaded round-hole racks. Static ReadyRails kits also support tooled installation in threaded-hole racks and 2-post racks. In order to install sliding ReadyRails kits into a threaded-hole rack, adapter brackets are required.

Rail types Sliding rails allow you to fully extend the system out of the rack for service. To help manage the numerous cables associated with rack-mounted servers, use the optional cable management arm (CMA) with the sliding rails that you can attach on either the right or left side without tools. Note that using a CMA with a deeper system may interfere with access to power distribution units (PDUs) in certain racks.

If your configuration does not require CMA support, you can remove the outer CMA mounting brackets from some of the sliding rail kits to reduce the overall length of the rails and eliminate potential interference with rear-mounted PDUs or the rack rear door.

1U and 2U sliding rails have been standardized with a slim drop-in design that holds a wide system chassis to accommodate more features and functions. They also have a self-adjusting mechanism that accommodates different depths of systems, offering compatibility across multiple platform models.

Static rails do not support the ability to service the system in the rack and are not compatible with the CMA. However, they do offer more flexibility in the types of racks and installations supported.

In order to make sure you select the correct rail kit for your device, you will need the model number of your device / system and the type of rack you have.

Video 1: Installing Dell Combo Rails; and removing these from the racks.