Rack having uniform bays and an optical interconnect system for shelf-level, modular deployment of sleds enclosing information technology equipment

A rack-based system for deploying modular information technology equipment, the rack-based system comprising:

• a network switch having multiple switching elements;
• a rack including the network switch and multiple bays, each bay of the multiple bays having at its rear a first blind mate fiber-optic connector portion;
• an optical network defined by fiber-optic cabling extending from first blind mate fiber-optic connector portions of the multiple bays to preselected switching elements of the multiple switching elements;
• and
• multiple server sleds including compute sleds and storage sleds, each server sled of the multiple server sleds having at its back side a second blind mate fiber-optic connector portion matable with the first blind mate fiber-optic connector portion, and each server sled being sized to slide into a corresponding bay of the multiple bays so as to connect information technology equipment of the server sled to the optical network in response to mating portions of a blind mate fiber-optic connector of the server sled and the corresponding bay.