Getting started with Railyard Your first row, rack and devices

In this tutorial you'll sign in, then add a row, a rack and three real devices to an estate.

Railyard is passwordless. Enter your email and we send you a one-time sign-in code. The first time, you agree to the terms, and your free account is ready. The Community plan needs no card.

You land in a working example estate. Skip the short tour for now. The tool rail switches between Physical, Power, Cabling and Topology: that's where you place equipment, plan power, cable it, and draw the network. Click the data centre in the tree and its rows appear.

To start fresh, choose New project. You can begin from a starting point such as the example data centre, or a blank estate. Your projects live on this page. We'll carry on in the example.

Click Add space, give it the name shown on screen, and choose Row. Create the space, and an empty row appears in the tree. Every level is optional, so model only what you need.

Now Add rack. The row is preselected, so type the rack name shown on screen and create it. Rack details shows an empty rack: no devices, forty-two U free.

Double-click an empty unit to add a device. Type in the device type and Railyard searches the catalogue. Pick the Cisco Nexus switch, then type in the name shown on screen.

Same again lower down: choose the Dell PowerEdge R760 server and type in its name. The device count and free U update. The power draw stays the same, because the catalogue has no power figure for this server.

Now something heavier: the Dell PowerEdge GPU server, with eight H100s. Power draw jumps to 10.7 kilowatts, and the rack header shows 133.1 kilograms.

Three devices, thirty-three U free, 10.7 kilowatts and 133.1 kilograms, all from the device types you chose.

You'll see amber triangles on the devices. They're design warnings: hover one and Railyard says the device has no valid power connection yet, with a shortcut to connect power. The Review button counts them all. Cabling and power, next, shows power feeds, and Design review, later in the series, explains every check.

Select the data centre, then the new row, and the finished rack is on the board, with row totals for power, utilisation, weight and heat. Next, move on to cabling and power.

Try it free at railyard.sh. More in the docs at railyard.sh/docs.