rackmount

Rackmount refers to equipment designed to be installed in a rack or rack cabinet, typically using standardized mounting rails and a shared width. The term also describes the rack infrastructure that provides those rails. The most common standard for 19-inch racks is the EIA-310-D family, which defines the width and the arrangement of mounting holes and the use of rack units to measure height.

Equipment is mounted in 19-inch wide enclosures; the width is fixed, while height is measured in U (rack units). One rack unit equals 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). Equipment heights are expressed in U, such as 1U, 2U, or 4U. Depth varies between devices and cabinets, with common cabinet depths ranging from about 18 to 42 inches (roughly 450 to 1050 mm).

Devices have front mounting flanges that attach to vertical rails inside a cabinet or to a wall-mount frame. Rails may be fixed, adjustable, or slide-out; cable management arms and rear access are often used. Installations may employ blanking panels to improve airflow and reduce recirculation.

Common rackmount devices include servers, network switches, storage arrays, patch panels, power distribution units, telecom gear, and some audio-visual equipment. In data centers and telecom facilities, rack mounting enables dense, standardized layouts and scalable growth, with typical front-to-back cooling and organized cable management through horizontal and vertical cable runs.

While the 19-inch format is dominant, other sizes and standards exist for specialized equipment, and some devices are designed to be rack-mountable while using different mounting configurations. Compatibility between chassis, rails, and cabinets is a key consideration in system design.