Does removing cabinet sides adversely affect airflow?
We currently have five cabinets in a DC, all of which have both steel sides of each cabinet still present and all of which are next to each in a consecutive row of five. We currently run cabling under each cabinet to link network devices, servers, FAS etc.. However it is becoming a bit tight trying to run cabling for numerous devices through a 2 inch gap at the bottom of each cabinet.
I have noticed that some cabinets in DC's have the side walls taken off and the cabling runs across from cab to cab, rather than down to the bottom of the cab and under the cab wall. However I have often wondered how the airflow is affected in these cabinets with no walls and if it would have a negative effect on the devices in those cabinets?
My question is would anyone advise taking the sides off our five cabinets, so that rather than having five separate cabs, we essentially would have the five cabs all contained within just the two end walls and no "internal" walls between cabs, thus making cabling easier between devices?
Crude diagram of current layout would be five cabs with walls like this: |_||_||_||_||_|
Which with the removal of internal cabinet walls would then look like: |___________|
Does removing cabinet sides adversely affect airflow?
