feat: Ability to set how many Units the Rear view of a Device occupies

[brandonb927]

Problem

I have 2U and 4U server devices stacked in the front but on the back the rails only occupy 1U. This means there is 2U of space in between the rails where I have a 1U PDU on the rear. This is not feasible in the current implementation and I'm wondering if this is a reasonable request?

Proposed solution

Adding the ability to set which Units the rails of a device occupy on the front/rear, or have 1U/2U/3U/4U 1/2-depth options as well which would satisfy this request too.

Alternatives considered

No response

How important is this to you?

Nice to have

[ggfevans]

Oh interesting. so there is a 2U space occupied in front and 1U at rear, and a 4U in front and 1U at rear?

I can definitely imagine this use case, it hadn't occurred to be before but makes sense. It might be something we can cover under #159 or similar

[brandonb927]

Yeah I have a 30" deep rack so it affords me some space and interesting configurations with enterprise and non-enterprise gear.

[ggfevans]

Gotcha. Im curious, do you think a side-profile type view would be useful? e.g. a view from either the left or right, with the rack rotated 90 degrees from front. I am trying to find examples of what I am picturing and its surprisingly hard, which might mean it has value or maybe not. My thinking is it would be good to visualize the depth of half-depth devices or devices of varying depths for collisions or air flow.

[brandonb927]

That would be interesting but I don't think necessary specifically for this feature request. Here is a few photos of my rack for inspiration (please excuse the terrible cable management in the back).

[ggfevans]

No judgement hah, thanks for sharing the photos - these help. I have a similar rack and a similar tangle of cables.

Yeah, side view may not be necessary though a low priority nice to have.

For the original request, do you picture a visual indicator of just the rack space occupied by the rail at the back, e.g. like a 1U slot for the 4U server at its rear? I am thinking thats the most simple approach to satisfy that.

[brandonb927]

I'm not opposed to that. I also think having half-depth options for 1-4U servers would suffice and get me what I want too.