Building a Homelab Rack: Choosing a Cabinet, Rails, PDU, and Cable Management
Every hardware guide on this site so far has assumed the rack already exists. Buying used enterprise gear, sizing a UPS, picking a managed switch, all of it takes for granted that there’s somewhere to physically put the thing. That assumption falls apart fast for anyone starting from a mini PC on a shelf and a switch zip-tied to the underside of a desk. This is the article that comes before all of those: the cabinet itself, the rails that hold gear in it, the power distribution feeding it, and the cable management that decides whether adding a fourth device is a five-minute job or an afternoon of re-routing everything you already installed. ...