Rack Editor concepts

Racks and rack units (U)

A rack in CreaRack is the digital twin of a physical server cabinet. Rack height is measured in rack units (U): 1U equals 1.75 inches (44.45 mm). The default height is 42U — the standard datacenter cabinet — but you can set any height when you create the rack (24U comms rooms, 12U wall-mount cabinets, and so on).

Positions are counted from the bottom up, starting at U1. A 2U server placed at position 10 occupies U10 and U11.

Rack states

Every rack has a status that reflects where it is in its lifecycle:

Deleting a rack is a soft delete: it moves to the trash and can be restored, so a misclick never destroys your documentation.

Rack groups

Rack groups are optional, color-coded labels that organize racks into logical sets: rooms, sites, rows, or customers if you manage third-party infrastructure. A rack can belong to more than one group, which keeps large estates searchable and tidy.

Stencils vs devices

This is the key distinction in the editor:

• A stencil is a reusable template — image, default U height, manufacturer, category. It lives in the Library panel.
• A device is a concrete piece of equipment inside a rack — a switch, server, patch panel, UPS or PDU with its own name, notes and network settings.

Dragging a stencil onto the rack creates a device instance from that template. Each instance is independent: renaming or reconfiguring a device never changes the stencil it came from. See [[crearack—conceptos—stencils-conceptos]] for the full stencil model.

Device position and slots

Each device records its bottom U position and its height in U. The properties panel shows both (Height and Position).

Half-width devices — two units sharing the same U row, side by side — also have a Slot: Left or Right. This lets you document paired equipment such as compact switches or half-rack appliances accurately.

Devices with Network Mgmt enabled also carry a live status (Online, Offline, Warning or Unknown) plus their management IP and Vendor, fed by monitoring and discovery.

The canvas

The canvas is the visual workspace where the rack is drawn. From it you can:

• Drag stencils from the Library panel (left sidebar) onto the rack.
• Move devices between positions by dragging; U guides on the side help you place them.
• Select a device to open its properties panel (right sidebar): name, notes, ports, network management.
• Undo/Redo any change (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y).
• Lock the canvas with the Unlock/lock toggle to prevent accidental edits while browsing.
• Re-center the view with the fit-view button and zoom freely.

Changes save automatically; the save status indicator in the header confirms it.

Rack templates

A rack can be saved as a master template and copied into other racks with Copy from… — useful when you deploy many identically configured cabinets. The source can be a Master or any other rack of your system (notes and management settings are not copied), and you pick a mode: Replace deletes the devices currently in the rack, Add on top keeps them and copies only where there is room.

Related

• [[crearack—conceptos—stencils-conceptos]] — stencils and the device library in depth
• [[crearack—conceptos—glosario]] — quick definitions of every product term
• [[crearack—racks—dispositivos]] — how to add and configure devices
• [[crearack—racks—stencils-crear]] — how to create your own stencils

Véase también

• [[crearack—conceptos—stencils-conceptos]]
• [[crearack—conceptos—glosario]]
• [[crearack—racks—dispositivos]]
• [[crearack—racks—stencils-crear]]