Rack Mount Enclosure

Here are details for the Joyance 565 series rackmount PC enclosures we use for Linux based firewalls, servers, and similar purposes. These are availible with normal or hot swappable redundant power supplies in AT, ATX, and passive backplane configurations.

Ordering Information

• CS409 19" Rack Computer Case 5 Bay 4U ATX HSP $772.00
• CS450 BB Slide Pair for 19 Rack Computer Case $73.00

Without the redundant power supply, this enclosure costs about half as much, making it a very economical rack mount enclosure. The price difference between it and a tower case is a little over $200 (not including slides). The redundant power supply version is not listed on their web page but is availible.

has interior pictures.

Gorilla appears to have the same case.

THis case is availble in AT, ATX, and "Passive" Backplane versions.

The shipping box itself says:

ITEM NO. 566-8
Q'TY: 1 PC.
N.W.: 13 KGS
G.W.: 15 KGS
MEAS: 3.5 CUFT.

Joyance inside a diamond  (this had been deliberately defaced).
SAVANA
C/NO 229
Made in Taiwan, R.O.C.

The Actual manufacturer is Joyance Enterprise Co. in Taiwan, Phone: 886-2-281-9967, Fax: 886-2-281-8817, Part no: 565-ATX for the ATX version, 566-8 for the hot-swap PS version.

Mechanical Details

The case is fairly rigid but will deform when torsional forces are applied. I would not recomend using it in tilting environment, such as the Casegrain Focus at a major observatory, without mounting the rear of the case as well as the front.

The slide mount rails, or rather the flimsy brackets they are supplied with, are not strong enough to support the case in a relay rack; a communications rack would be required. Weird metric screws, which were not supplied, appear to be required for mounting as well.

There is a retaining brackets assembly to hold cards in place during shipment. There is a removable finger for each card slot which can be mounted in one of two positions for ISA or PCI cards. The rack was supplied with an assortment of 14 fingers in three different heights; in some cases the supplied fingers may not be addequate for a particular configuration if you need to many of one size or another. There is some range of fine height adjustment by loosening the mounting screw and sliding the finger up and down.

The case appears to have motherboard mounting holes in all the positions called for in the ATX spec and then some.

There is an old style keyboard connector on the front. There is a cable which can plug into the rear keyboard connector and bring it out to the front (may need PS/2 adapter).

Screws are one of the bigger problems with this case. The screws are an assortment of english and metric. The motherboard mounting screws/standoffs are english as are the drive mounting screws but those which hold the case together are metric.

Cutouts

There are cutouts for 2 DB9 and 2 DB25 connectors above the ATX I/O shield area. There is a long cutout above the card slots. This is shipped with a blank cover plate but two others are supplied: one accomodates 1 DB9, 1 DB 25, and one rectangular cutout larger than a DB25; the other holds 2 DB9 and 2 DB25 connectors. This hole would also be a good place to run large ribbon cables out the back of the case for cards which need lots of external connections or use odd connectors. Custom coverplates could also be fabricated to accomidate other connectors, switches, etc.

Cooling

Drive mounting

Redundant Power Supply

The power supply uses a single power cord. There are two hot swap modules with handles and a single retaining screw. Each module has a pilot light LED and its own power switch. The power switches are upside down (english style); you flip the rocker switch down to turn it on.

There are 3 wire pairs coming out of the supply along with the power wires with connectors and LEDs installed in the connectors. These LED's can be mounted for front panel viewing or existing mounted LEDs can be used if your case accomodates either of these options. Two of the LED's indicate the status of power coming from the two separate power modules. The third lights if both power modules are suppling power and flashes if only one is. There is an audible alarm which will sound if either module fails, is unplugged, or is turned off. A pushbutton on the rear resets the alarm. The rack mount case lacks holes for these three extra LEDs although the existing power LED can be removed and the flashing status LED installed in a place. 4~

There are two cooling fans in the hot swap redundant power supply unit. The larger one forces air drawn in from a grill in the top of the unit out the back through the two hot swappable modules. The smaller fan appears to cool just the circuitry which combines the outputs of the two supplies. It draws air in from the rear of the power supply (i.e. from the front of the case) and exahusts it around the sides. A small amount of air may leak through to the redundant supply modules but it can not be relied up to cool either the computer or the redundant power supply modules in the event of the larger fan failing. Fortunately, the rack mount case has a huge fan which draws air in from the front of the chassis through a replaceable air filter and blows it directly over the expansion slots. If the case was properly sealed, this fan would force air out through the power supply.

On the first unit we received, the fan was rubbing against the fan grill stamped in the power supply enclosure. Rather than deal with the hassles of returning the supply, I just grabbed the spokes of the "grill" with needle nose pliers and pulled outward a little bit to give outward clearance. To achieve maximum airflow a large amount of metal had been removed when stamping out the "grill", leaving little rigidity and there was very little clearance between the fan and the "grill" to start with. The remaining metal could easily have been deformed handling the power supply.

The power supply has 4 large and 2 small drive power connectors in addition to the motherboard power connector.

Even in the event of some catastropic failure of the entire redundant power supply unit, a standard PS/2 form factor power supply with ATX motherboard connector (i.e. a standard ATX supply) could be set in the space occupied by the redundant unit. Even if you don't have the hot-swappable redundant supplies, a spare ATX or PS/2 power supply is usually not hard to locate on the local economy or can be stolen from a desktop machine (although it makes sense to keep an inexpensive spare unit (preferably with both AT and ATX connectors) around for emergencies). If you were using a proprietary "solution", such as a Cisco 2501 router, you would be SOL; instead of being back online within minutes, your downtime would be measured in days. The power supply is the highest failure rate component of a typical PC (and most other equipment).

The redundant power system supports soft power. If you power up the supply without a motherboard connected, it will play dead. None of the fans, beeper, or LEDs will display signs of life. But the standby power should be supplied and it is waiting for PS-ON to be grounded by the motherboard. When it is plugged into a typical motherboard, it still will not come on until a pulse is applied to the power on pins on the motherboard from the front panel power switch. Interestingly, when used with an ASUS TX97-X Smart ATX mainboard, it does power up properly after power loss after it has been manually powered up once (even if you don't use the right setting for "AC Power loss restart") even though the exact same motherboard does not do so in a different case with a DTK PTP-3018 regardless of bios settings, even using the same power on switch contacts; that power supply seems to be edge triggered rather than level triggered in violation of ATX specifications. It is very important for firewalls, routers, and many other applications that the system power back on without manual intervention after an extended power outage which exceeds the capacity of the UPS; make sure your motherboard/power supply will function properly in this situation.

No fan sensing

ATX

A very important feature of ATX is that it moves the CPU, simm-sockets, and connectors away from the area beneath the expansion cards. This allows you to use full length cards in every slot. This had become a very serious problem in Baby AT form factor boards. It might not cause problems on a boring desktop machine where all the cards are likely to be short cards but it is a very serious problem with cutting edge systems with things like WAN interfaces, 4 port ethernet adapters, Data Aquisition boards, etc.

The ATX form factor has a differnt power connector with more pins which help accomodate additional features such as soft-power, standby power, and 3.3V supply so there is no need for a regulator on the motherboard to support modern CPUs.

A normal ATX case can also mount a standard AT motherboard with an appropriate I/O shield. The ATX specifation specifically includes mounting hole locations for older Full AT and Baby AT motherboards. A different power supply may be required to power an older AT style motherboard, although some supplies have the necessary connectors to handle both.

There are some problems with ATX as implemented in the real world. There is some inconsistency as to whether or not the power supply fan cools the CPU (so you can just put a big heatsink on it and don't need a fan); this was apparently added in a later version of the specification. The senpsible thing would be for the motherboard to come with the matching "I/O shield" but actually the cases ship with a few standard configurations and a motherboard typically arrives without any. Hopefully, if a motherboard didn't use the standard shield they would include a matching shield. The shields are either thin snap in covers or thicker screw in ones; they are not necessarily interchangeable either. So far, I have not had problems with the shields not fitting. Some motherboards have both AT and ATX style power connectors. Likewise, some power supplies have both. Some manufacturers deviate from ATX recomendations and put header connectors for things like the power and reset switches and fan sense leads on the

An optional 6 pin connector between the power supply and motherboard can be used to implement fan control, fan failure detection (tachometer output), remote 3.3V sense, and isolated power for IEEE-1394. I have yet to see this feature on any ATX motherboard or power supply. The fan failure detection is very nice because it would allow a compatible motherboard to signal the operating system which could then do appropriate things like generate a SNMP trap to notify the NOC (possibly in a different location) of the failure and prepare the system for an orderly shutdown. I don't know if these sensors are supported by the APM code, however.

Information on ATX is availible at the ATX Form Factor page. It lists case, power supply, motherboard, and I/O shield vendors.

Firewall assembly notes

Other resources

Pictures of the rackmount case

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