We're mounting 30+ new Dell R710 servers in 42U racks at our colo facility.
We believe they can be mounted directly on top of each other (in their own rails of course), without needing any spacing (1U) between them.
Is this how others typically mounted the R710? Anyone know dell's recommendations?
Yes. We have all our R710's fitted one under the other, with no gaps inbetween. We're not running a full rack density (our racks have other things filling the gaps between them like blade chassis etc) but we certainly don't leave any gaps for anything.
It's my belief that in modern racks filled with modern servers in a cool environment you shouldn't need to leave any gaps anywhere except in exceptional circumstances.
As for Dell, we had an Equallogic guy come out to do our initial installation of our first units and he made no comment on it, and he certainly knew about it because he had the fun job of setting up all the SPF+ connects for the 10GbE SAN.
Yes. You shouldn't leave open U's between servers as it disrupts the engineered airflow of both the server and the rack. If you feel like you need to leave open U's between servers then you should install blanking/filler panels in the open U's.
http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=bsd&c=us&l=en&cs=04&k=Closeout+Filler+Panel&cat=all
