card reader on electrical enclosure?

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malachi constant

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Minneapolis
Hi all,
An Owner has a lineup of network equipment cabinets we are designing for. Some of the cabinets house network equipment, some house UPS equipment, some house fire suppression and HVAC equipment. They want to put card readers not just on the door into the room, but onto each cabinet in the lineup. It seems like a bad idea, but what is the difference between putting a card reader on a door to a room to keep out people, vs putting it on a door to a cabinet to keep out people? I am not aware of anything in code that prohibits this but wanted to bounce it off the community.
Thanks!
 
People may have access to the room, but not have access to the network equipment.
Easier to control card access than keeping track of physical keys.
 
Even if the person has permission to access the equipment, the card reader would show if they actually did access it, or just the room and other equipment..
 
Yeah, I can see the merits. Just hadn't seen it actually done before, and wanted to make sure there wasn't a code concern. To clarify: not all the equipment is network equipment. Some of it is 3-phase UPS (something on the order of 30kVA) w/ battery cabinet and bypass. Another section is HVAC. Another section contains the fire suppression equipment protecting the entire lineup. I guess the HVAC and fire suppression questions are someone else's concern - the UPS access would be my area of concern. There will be a UPS EPO outside the cabinet, so if there was a fault the EPO would kill power to the UPS and network cabinets, but not the HVAC. Thinking it through further, the HVAC would be fed from a breaker panel in the room (which is not secured by card access) that could be used to kill power to the units should that be needed.

Unless there is a code violation with restricting access into the UPS & battery cabinets, I don't see any issue here.
 
I think possible failure modes and their impact should be considered in the design of the system of readers and electronic locks. For example, I don't think you'd want the reader and lock on a cabinet with a UPS inside to be powered through that same UPS (assuming that the power must be ON to open that lock). ;)
 
Even with card readers/electric locks, you'd still need a regular key lock (albeit with tightly-controlled keys) in case of reader problems and also both door-open and key-lock-open sensors. Oh, and timed alarms for both of those (leave the door open too long? raise a flag).

As mentioned above, consider whether to use a fail-locked or fail-open locking mechanism. I'd have to really think about that one.
 
I'm going to recommend card readers on only the network cabinets, and to not reader the UPS / cooling / fire suppression cabinets. The room itself is secure, and there are other mech/elec components in the room that are not secured any further than the lock on the door. Thanks all!
 
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