Mikrotik SolidRack 10
I recently went through a round of network upgrades and I had stuff and cables all over the place. There was a real need to get organized and to employ at least a LITTLE cable management. I also decided to run two separate networks and needed a simple way to keep everything straight. Enter the Mikrotik SolidRack 10.
SolidRack 10
Most server racks are either big, or expensive, or both. I didn’t want anything big. Just a place to mount a couple of switches that didn’t occupy too much real estate.
That is where the Mikrotik SolidRack 10 really shines. It is small, and very affordable at about $43 at Multilink. Right this second they are out of stock.
I do want to point out the obvious with this rack. There are no back legs! That is NOT a complaint. All I’m saying is this is for light duty use and you aren’t going to cram some Dell PowerEdge servers in this thing.
Okay, I will concede that you probably could do it if you hacked something up or propped up the back end of the server with a ServerBrick™ or something. But natively, it’s not meant for that and you know what I meant.
It is better suited for mounting switches and in my case I mounted:
- CSS326-24G-2S+RM Switch – an amazing smart switch for the cost.
- ADJ Products PC-100A Power Strip
- UCTRONICS 1U Raspberry Pi Rack
Mikrotik Rack Reporting For Duty, Sir
And I laid a TRENDnet 2.5 GB switch on top of the power strip on the right hand side.
My Opinion
I like it! Maybe I love it. If you want to build a full blown HomeLab monstrosity, this probably isn’t your Huckleberry. However, comma, if you need to do what I did or you just need an environment to test something before deploying it on your network this rack is PERFECT for that mission.
You can tilt it back just a hair as well so the weight shifts onto the back legs so it won’t topple over. Probably best to keep the load low on the rack and the heavier stuff towards the bottom if you want to stand it up straight. I laid mine back. Looks cooler that way too.
What I love most on my setup is the Raspberry Pi rack. I have Pi’s all over the house, doing all kinds of stuff. This puts them in one place and it allows me to connect them to ethernet rather than wirelessly. Win, win.
While I didn’t purchase them, they also have mounting hardware (RMK-2/10) that allows you to install two smaller Mikrotik devices in one standard 19″ rack. Pretty cool trick.
Wrap Up
Try as I might, there isn’t a lot to say about this rack other than it is small, inexpensive, and very well designed. Mikrotik itself claims it was never meant to be a for sale product. It was something they made for their own use. I reckon they thought it was clever enough to sell a few units. Based on the fact they are mostly sold out everywhere I’d say that was a pretty fair assessment.
Again, you aren’t going to mount heavy rackmount servers in this thing but it is an amazing place to put your switches and other small network hardware. If you do any kind of home networking other than hooking a wifi router to your cable modem you kinda NEED one of these. It’s entirely too cool, and at a great price point.