Why tf are server chassis so expensive

[SpaceFlier]

Hi all, I'm trying to build a NAS that goes in my server rack but I can't seem to find something that isn't ridiculously overpriced or to enterprise for my needs. I then tried looking to building the server myself but perhaps the most important part of a NAS (other than the drives themselves), the chassis, are all ridiculous. I've just started out looking at servers so maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place, but the best deal I found was for a 60 drive chassis for 2000 AUD. That's 2k for some bent metal sheets. Is this the normal price for chassis and is there a seller that sells prosumer server hardware not at enterprise price points?

 

On a slightly same but separate issue is are hybrid drive type servers rare? I want a mix of ssd and hdds in my NAS but I can either find just hdd or ssd. I would have thought having a server where you have ssds in the hot swap bays and top load hard drives would be pretty good but apparently not.

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

Why do you need 60 drives at home?

Also 60 16TB HDD would be roughly $6000, add the other server hardware and you see why business might be willing to spend $2k on enclosures after all.

 

If you want it cheap at home: ebay: used SAN/iSCSI.

[Dedayog]

33 minutes ago, SpaceFlier said:

Hi all, I'm trying to build a NAS that goes in my server rack but I can't seem to find something that isn't ridiculously overpriced or to enterprise for my needs. I then tried looking to building the server myself but perhaps the most important part of a NAS (other than the drives themselves), the chassis, are all ridiculous. I've just started out looking at servers so maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place, but the best deal I found was for a 60 drive chassis for 2000 AUD. That's 2k for some bent metal sheets. Is this the normal price for chassis and is there a seller that sells prosumer server hardware not at enterprise price points?

 

On a slightly same but separate issue is are hybrid drive type servers rare? I want a mix of ssd and hdds in my NAS but I can either find just hdd or ssd. I would have thought having a server where you have ssds in the hot swap bays and top load hard drives would be pretty good but apparently not.

Yes, that is a normal-ish price.  You're looking for a 60 drive rack, which is not your average home setup.  

 

Curious as well what you need 60 drives for, so if it's a business.... $2k is nothing for spend.  Especially AUD.

 

 

[YoungBlade]

While the raw materials cost of the chassis isn't going to be much, sure, the cost of machining and assembly for a 60 drive chassis is not insignificant. All of the drive bays and the chassis itself are going to be built to spec with smaller tolerances than what you would get in a consumer case. This is because, once 60 drives are involved, the amount of vibration from them is pretty extreme. The chassis cannot be allowed to rattle about as a result of the drives spinning, so it needs to be built more precisely. It's also highly likely that it needs to ultimately be assembled by hand, which is going to require someone with experience - not a minimum wage employee - and there would be a lot of QC checks.

 

A business isn't going to blink at spending $2000 AUD, or even $2000 USD, for a chassis for their server, but they will be beyond furious if the chassis causes drive failures and loss of data.

 

Basically, while it might seem excessive for a case, the company likely isn't making that extreme of margins on it at the end of the day once you take the complexities of such a case into account.

[ToboRobot]

Economies of scale, and the target audience is typically big companies spending millions of dollars on hardware and have expensive staff to manage the computers, so the high cost of a server case isn't a big deal.

[brwainer]

Also consider that a Chassis like that typically includes the drive backplane and often the PSU(s) as well, which are low-volume specialized parts as far as these things go. If you look at the cost breakdown of a Backblaze pod you’ll see the backplanes cost as much or more than the bent metal, and they designed fairly simple ones that just need to do SATA, not full SAS.

[aggie113]

Plenty of good deals to be had on used chassis.

[SpaceFlier]

Thanks for the responses everyone,

To clarify a major point, I don't plan on using 60 drives, I'm looking for 24. but in terms of the (number of disks)/(cost),  the 60-bay one came out the cheapest per bay so that's why I used that point.

Thanks for pointing out the fact that businesses don't care, it does explain a bit about why everything is so overpriced.

Does anyone know a place to buy a chassis (or full-built server if the price is worth the parts) for something a little more reasonable than businesses?

[Electronics Wizardy]

49 minutes ago, SpaceFlier said:

Thanks for the responses everyone,

To clarify a major point, I don't plan on using 60 drives, I'm looking for 24. but in terms of the (number of disks)/(cost),  the 60-bay one came out the cheapest per bay so that's why I used that point.

Thanks for pointing out the fact that businesses don't care, it does explain a bit about why everything is so overpriced.

Does anyone know a place to buy a chassis (or full-built server if the price is worth the parts) for something a little more reasonable than businesses?

A few tips.

 

Shipping is a large chassis is often a lot of the cost. If you can find a seller near you can often lower the cost a lot if you can pick it up rather than ship it.

 

Try to negotiate with the seller, I have heard stories of getting much lower prices when asking for them.

 

I have found supermicro 36 bays to be pretty good deals recently. Here is one example, and most ATX/EATX boards should fit https://www.ebay.com/itm/144716914920

[voyager_]

I have had good luck with the rosewill server chassis, they have gone up in price over the past couple of years. I don't recall if they have one for 24 drives though, I have a couple of their cases with 8x 3.5in 2x 2.5in ssd and a 3x 3.5 hot swap in a couple of the 5.25in drive bays. They have a couple of configs but they still are a few hundred. My last case I bought was 250ish on ebay a couple of years ago.

 

 

 

The high cost is down to the increased cost to produce the case, limited marked, specialized parts, and we are not the intended market. The companies that servers don't care as much about the cost and many are special form factors or have limited support. There are not many chassis on the market that are intended for off the shelf components so they have to make up the design/fab costs over few purchases then a standard pc case.

[Needfuldoer]

Rack mount ATX cases are relatively niche. The vast majority of businesses deploying new servers will buy a stack of Dell, HP, or Supermicro hardware with a service contract, not generic whiteboxes from a system builder. Sometimes they're built into appliance machines (like TV graphics systems), but many of those deployments will also use Dell, HP, or Supermicro servers with custom branding.

 

Those 60-drive chassis are even more niche. Again, you're more likely to see a Dell EMC or Supermicro drawer than something like a Storinator in a "real production" environment. Even LMG's "Mother Vault" is a stack of Supermicro drawers. If they didn't have that partnership, they might have ended up with a Dell EMC Isilon instead.