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We're looking for a chassis with 45-60 bays for SAS/SATA disks and we found some 60-bay enclosures at ~ $11000 (see here and here for example - there are others as well).

However we found this one which have 45 bays (or 36 bays as server chassis) for $1700.

We think that the price difference is way too big (the price/bay is more than triple). Why is this?

I do NOT ask why the SAS enclosures are so expensive but why are so big differences between the prices of the SAS enclosures of different kinds. I think that's a different question from this one.

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John Thomas
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  • Feel free to join ServerFault's [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/127/the-comms-room) where there will be a couple of people interested in your requirements. – tombull89 Dec 02 '13 at 10:57

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Look at the features and it becomes clearer.

The cheaper one from SuperMicro is a flat "extend a server" element.Redundant power supplies but "that is it". Simple SAS expander.

The other ones are part for a SAS network inrastructure. Multiple controllers (hot swappable), zoning support - the idea is not that you ahve 60 bays for a server but 60 bays and can split them between multiple servers.

Naturally - if you do not need the features, the cost is "OMG" high.

TomTom
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We think that the price difference is way too big (the price/bay is more than triple). Why is this?

The price difference is a function of the capabilities of the product. As @TomTom said, multiple paths, zoning, power supplies, and hot-swap components are all features of a high-end JBOD storage enclosure.

Now, I would suggest that building a server today with a large amount of local storage requires some research and understanding of the implications of that design.

Can you elaborate a bit on why you need 45-60 disks in one enclosure?

Is this for storage capacity? IOPS requirements/performance? Do you need 2.5" disks or 3.5" disks?

There was a time when it made sense to do something like this... especially if there was some form of replication or application-level resiliency. This was when servers like the Sun x4540 were popular. But if this is a standalone server, I'd go with a head unit (2U server) and cascade one or more JBOD enclosures via SAS to arrive at the required capacity. More modular, safer design, less risk of the entire setup dying. The disks should probably be SAS as well... but that's another discussion.

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ewwhite
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  • *"Can you elaborate a bit on why you need 45-60 disks in one enclosure?"* - backup. We need to backup 100+ TB. No much need for speed, but we must be sure that we will NOT lose data. – John Thomas Dec 02 '13 at 07:14
  • @JohnThomas If you're looking to spend that much on storage, you need to look at pre-built products like ExaGrid. – longneck Dec 02 '13 at 18:04