Telecommunications cabinet or server rack (theory in practice)

According to Yandex statistics, the number of requests for the rental of server racks is 4 times more than the similar ones with the word “cabinet”. The only strange thing is that after the call to the client, it turns out that he needs to rent a telecommunications cabinet, and not a counter.

Here and there are questions:

1. What are you actually looking for?
2. Do they know the difference between a rack and a wardrobe?
3. Why are they looking for one and choosing another?
4. What do you want to get in the end?

1. “What are you actually looking for?”
To the first question, the answer seems obvious - pillars. But if you dig deeper, it turns out that customers for whole cabinets / closed drains are usually representatives of medium and large businesses, less often small companies. For such clients, the conditions of equipment maintenance (safety and protection, isolation from other clients, placement parameters), the data center system (power supply, fire extinguishing and video surveillance, air conditioning, power supply, etc.) are important.
Racks to accommodate equipment with such requests will not be enough, you need a closet.
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2. "Do they know the difference between a rack and a wardrobe?"
The answer to the second question also seems quite obvious. Just look at the pictures:



In addition to external differences, there are a number of other, no less important, but less noticeable factors:
- Cooling . Cabinets allow you to control the process of uniform cooling equipment, to establish a directional flow of cold and hot air outflow - reliability
- Security. Each cabinet can be additionally equipped with an alarm system, an access password and other means of access protection. From the standard: each cabinet has an individual lock and key to it.
- Strength (Everything is trite. The contents of the cabinet will remain intact, even if you touch it. It is closed and protected from prying eyes, eyes, and emergency).
Of course, the rack in some cases more justified. For example, in premises without raised floor, where the rack is placed directly on the cement floor or to accommodate passive equipment. In cases of savings for small budget data centers. After all, the cost of a telecommunications cabinet is several times higher than the cost of a rack.

3. “Why are they searching for one thing, but choosing another?”
The third question is rather rhetorical, but important!
If you systematize all the analytics I collected, you get this distribution:
1. do not bother much about the terminology (the word “rack” is more common in everyday life than the cabinet)
2. looking for the best option within a very limited budget, which initially marks the option of placement in cabinets
3. do not know the difference between the rack and the cabinet / do not know what they really need / are guided by other selection criteria and goals.

4. “What do you want to get in the end?”
And finally, the fourth question.
Here, too, several options to decrease:
1. Expensive and stupid
2. Cheap and angry
3. Search and find what is really needed and optimal.

The tendency of the market is such that the optimal third option very few people choose the first time, but sooner or later (especially for commercial organizations) come to this decision. It is a pity that the method of their own trial and error. The rest, I think? do not need comments.

For dessert, some statistics.

From the first 20 data centers, cabinets / racks offer:

Racks 72%
Cabinets 12%
No clear
Positioning 16%

At the same time, sites of 80% of the companies contained photographs of telecommunications cabinets only.

Who confuses whom?

Actually like this, I would like to discuss this issue!