In the two-plus years that I’ve owned my Xserve, I’ve never actually had to use the installation kit that allows it to be connected to a standard 19″ equipment rack. It’s always been in either a vertical stand I picked up from Marathon Computing (before they closed up shop) or sitting loose on a shelf inside a rack at work, where it’s been serving as a sort of unofficial test bed for a variety of projects. This week, though, it turns out that the rack in which it’s been sitting is going away, so I’ve been forced to dig out the rail kit and mount it properly.
Imagine my surprise when, approximately halfway through the instructions, I discover the funniest thing: I’m missing two of the brackets necessary to secure the slide-out rails at the rear of the server. [Expletive]!
So I’m trying to get some part numbers from a friend of mine, and hopefully I can order the parts cheap from Apple. In a way it’s a good thing, because it gives me a chance to also get the poor thing fixed up (one of its drive bays has been dysfunctional for over a year) and ready for its eventual trip to—ah, but I’m giving it away. Anyway, soon it will be happy once more. And I’ll have learned a valuable lesson about inspecting an item promptly upon arrival.
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