[c-nsp] Cases to lock a switch -- physical layer protection?

[Doug McIntyre]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 09:22:58AM -0400, Furnish, Trever G wrote:
> I have a particularly sensitive scenario where I need to allow access to
> other hardware within a rack but ensure that no one is able to
> physically modify connections to the top-of-rack switch and ASA.  I
> would love to find an in-rack-mountable case to go around the Cisco
> gear, in the same way that telco's commonly protect smartjack shelves.
> 
> Can anyone recommend such a case or similar protective measure?


I haven't seen anything that would work like that, but what I have
seen typically done is to drop in a 1/3 or 1/2 rack, with the
switch/ASA/patchpanel taking up the top 1/3rd leaving the other 2 thirds
to be used for whatever else. This works better for more EOR switch
setups than TOR. A big enough order to a rack vendor could probably 
get some custom setups going (ie. instead of split 50/50, have the top 5U 
and then the remaining 42U or 37U for the rest of the rack). 

You may be able to retro something like this VTR lockbox into a rack

    http://middleatlantic.com/enclosure/knock/vlbx.htm

with some glides and bolting everything in place before other gear is
there. 

But what I'd probably do given the situation would be to bolt another
box ontop of the rack altogether, like

    http://www.middleatlantic.com/enclosure/wall/dlbx.htm