Most of time we keep on adding servers in racks as and whenever needed. While doing this we encounter problems related to power or ports. For example One rack reaches power capacity while other run out of ports.
What should be best approach to design a rack to optimized power and ports?
You have highlighted issue or concern faced by most of datacenter engineers. Servers and applications hosted in datacenter is business for you. you would not like to hamper your business due to your bad planning while planning for racks. Racks are normally coming in 42U or 48U cabinet/racks. keep some points in mind while planning for your rack.
have mix of servers and other devices so keep optimum power usage and fully populate the rack.
Have servers which create more heat separated so that you dont have hot spot in datacenter.
Use racks to mount network ports : copper or/and fiber within same rack
Use KVM etc in distributed mode.
Always keep monitor on power usage on each rack so that you know you are at what capacity level..
As I know Forward-looking IT departments are arrange their data centers for the future by integrating support for 10 Gigabit Ethernet and a unified network fabric into their switching and cabling strategies.