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Possible Duplicate:
Permanent case for shipping 2U servers?

I am responsible for our companys server infrastructure at trade shows. We have 2 annual shows, 1 in Las Vegas and 1 in Amsterdam, so obviously our servers do quite a bit of travelling.

Quite often, it gets home with pieces falling off, and insurance/rebuilding takes ages and cost a lot of money.

For now I have been using a wooden rack-box, with steel-reinforced sides/corners, but I am looking for something tougher.

Does anyone have experience with sending servers all around the world, without them dieing all the time?

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Nso
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    Why do they need to travel with you? The Internet is great for accessing servers that are elsewhere ;-) – Chris McKeown Oct 02 '12 at 09:42
  • I would suggest to talk to a company that specialises in moving high-tech equipment and ask them what they use. Ultimately though it's usually not the case that needs to be stronger but the inside padding that needs to be better - stable yet soft enough to take the forces that happen during any transport. – Sven Oct 02 '12 at 09:42
  • @ChrisMcKeown: Well, I imagine a trade show with nothing to show then a few pictures could be a dull experience. – Sven Oct 02 '12 at 09:43
  • @SvenW Assuming that the servers are what they're selling and they're not there for some other reason, which is why I asked :-) – Chris McKeown Oct 02 '12 at 09:45
  • Why not just get some decent custom made cases? Any half decent engineering company could make something suitable. – John Gardeniers Oct 02 '12 at 09:49
  • I'm afraid we need the servers with us, Internet access is limited and crazy expensive at trade shows so we need everything to be local. – Nso Oct 02 '12 at 11:05
  • I would recommend transporting the drives with your carry-on baggage. – jftuga Oct 02 '12 at 11:45
  • Are you showcasing the hardware or some application running on the hardware? – joeqwerty Oct 02 '12 at 14:35
  • We are showing applications running on the servers, but we can not get a big enough internet connection to do it over there. And they are way too big to make it baggage. – Nso Oct 03 '12 at 11:44

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Yes. For standalone servers, I've used standard wood/aluminum ATA-rated flight cases. That's nice for situations where the end-recipient will assemble the server and you're just looking for a nice reusable case. Shipping demo equipment is a good use-case for this.

For portable installations like trade shows, etc., I've used shock-absorbing ATA cases. These cost twice as much as standard cases, but are worth it if you need to send an entire system stack (server, networking, etc.) to a location pre-configured.

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ewwhite
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  • The link to wood/aluminum looks pretty much exatly like the one I use, except mine has space for 4-6 server (which is the problem, too big). The shock-absorbing one looks like it should be able to take some more beating though, I'll look in to that :) – Nso Oct 02 '12 at 11:01
  • The case you found looks like exactly what I need, so answer accepted. Sorry for taking a while, I am new and clicked "useful" instead:) – Nso Oct 03 '12 at 11:43