I was dead set on using sliding rails for all of my servers…until I used sliding rails on a couple of my servers. They aren’t worth the trouble imo. Maybe at datacenters or in non-homelab situations. Shelves have been so much easier and practical.

I found that, when I needed to work on a server, I really needed it out of the rack completely. I rarely found myself being able to take advantage of sliding rails. It was always easier to just sliding it out completely and throw it on my work bench.