I've just spent the last few days building my first server rack. It will be a significant upgrade to our current mess. I was asked to buy and install one and so I did. I was not completely aware of the distinction between a closed and open rack, though I did compare them and chose a closed one due to it looking more 'fully featured' than the more bare skeleton looking ones.
I've already received some criticism from third parties about my intention to put cabling into a closed rack. "That's not a rack, that's a cabinet" they say. (It is a 4-post 42U closed rack (cabinet/enclosure).) They think I should use a second open rack and put all the networking in the second rack instead of this one. We will have a second open rack anyway, which will be holding some fibre optics that will be connecting to our main ethernet network.
My question is: is it such a big deal to put cabling into a closed rack? Is it such a big deal to have a closed instead of open rack if security is not that critical? And maybe related: does it make more sense to put the fibre and ethernet network in one rack, and then servers and hardware in a second, or maybe to put the fibre stuff in one, and ethernet and servers in the second (I personally feel like I want to keep the fibre stuff separate from the ethernet stuff), or maybe it doesn't necessarily matter?