Looking for solutions and/or suggestions on how to keep network equipment clean in harsh environments with lots of dust.
While the equipment is in cabinets with filters, we are not able to keep these areas in a sealed environment so they collect tons of dust daily that can easily start to cake the equipment. DataVac helps some initially, but not good enough.
Picture of the filtering system?
I did a quick google and didn’t find what I was looking for… There used to be doors with big filters on them that could be hung on the front of racks, and then maybe exhaust fans on the back to help move the air. It’s looking like you need a HEPA level filter which will probably block a bunch of airflow.
You may also need to put filters on the equipment cooling fans. And you may need to crimp up a bunch of empty RJ45 to stick in the empty ports. Do yourself a favor and put a short length of cable in the connector to help you pull them out, bare connectors would be difficult.
Alternate is you could tape off the empty ports to keep the air from being sucked through, but adhesive will get dirty and fail.
Something like these sealed NEMA cabinets might work too, never used them so not really sure. https://www.blackbox.com/en-US/store/browse?cat=Cabinets%2C+Racks%2C+and+Enclosures_Climate+Cabinets
Hi Greg! Thanks for the info, I hadn’t considered using dummy connectors for the empty ports, excellent suggestion! Unfortunately, the NEMA cabinets you referenced are a bit out of our price range, but it does help give me something that I might be able to engineer/fabricate.
The initial post only let me upload one photo at a time, so I’ll try and post the others below.
Also, I should probably note, the pictures provided are from the newest area we have. The other cabinets and equipment are quite a bit worse but are the same setup, they’ve just been around longer…
What is the switch actually doing? It looks like all it is doing is converting fiber to copper and you’d be better off with a media converter that should require no vents. Is the UPS required? If you went to a media converter you might be able to use a UPS that is much smaller and no cooling fan. Then you would have no air flow and no/low dust issue.
May not work for other areas, but something to consider. There are also some fanless small switches like some of the Mikrotek stuff that might do what you need.
I’d say to use a smaller rack, but I know there aren’t many choices for wall mount stuff. With a smaller rack you might be able to seal and filter it better.
This particular switch was set up for upcoming expansion and currently only has IP cameras on it.
Thanks again Greg, I’ll look into these options.