How to calculate wight in datacenter
 

I'm interested what is the best way to calculate the total weight of racks in datacenter.
Is there any special formula for that?

What do you think is the best way to do the calculation? Looking for your best guess here.


Ken

Well the best way is to take the weight of each item in the cabinet and then add the weight of the cabinet. This would not include cabling though.

My guess would be:
30 lbs per 1u of space used. This will be for servers. Switches and other equipment could be measured at 20 lbs.
150-200 lbs for the enclosure itself.
The cabling is the toughest part. I would suggest about 1 lb per 10 feet of a single cable.

After you have gotten a base number add a 20% margin of error to be safe. I assume this is for calculating raised floor strength. Remember the old Rockford Fosgate motto: To much is just enough.

Hope this helps,
OBXandos

Data center weight calculation
 

It used to be about 800lbs average for a racks load (plus the rack's or cabinet's own weight). Now the average is moving toward 2500-3000 lbs for highly populated racks/cabinets. And if you are looking at using cabinets instead of a 2 post rack then add another 1000 lbs on average for the cabinets weight. So this should put you around 3500-4000lbs on average for a cabinet. Please keep in mind this would change hugely depending on your usage scenarios. In our data center we have some customers renting a full rack with only a few 4U servers in them, and some customers with close to 80 half depth high end servers putting the cabinets weight to around 4000lbs with the cables etc...

Your weight numbers surprise me a little. They sound quite high. Fully populated IBM DS8870 is around 2600 lbs and that's a fairly substantial unit and one of the heaviest in our data centers.

Shipping weight on the racks we're using is around 350lbs. Add in servers and cabling and at around 70% populated, its 1200lbs all together.

So I'm sure it's possible but your numbers sound pretty high.

weigh the datacenter. then remove the racks and weigh the datacenter again.the weight difference is the weight of the racks.

Re:How to calculate wight in datacenter
 

To begin with, include the weight of every single bit of gear in the rack. At that point include the weight of the rack itself. The outcome will be the sum weight.