>> What "special connectors"?
>
> I was talking more about "blade servers"

Oh, right.

Yes, those really /are/ expensive. If nothing else, each manufacturer's 
blades only fit in their own blade centre. So once you have their blade 
centre, they are the only people who can sell you blades. So they can 
charge any arbitrary price they want.

> but even if we are talking about a "desktop" PC case vs. a
> rack-mountable server with a similar CPU. The rackmountable server will
> have a lot more consideration put into its ventilation and heat
> disspation since it is made to be in a closed space full of other
> heat-generating devices. Secondly, rack-mounted servers usually come
> with a lot of extra feautres not usually found on classical desktop
> hardware, such as hot-swappable disks, power supplies, and in some
> cases, memory and CPUs.
>
> You need to realise that these things also contribute to the price of a
> rack-mountable server.

When I joined the company, we had floor-standing servers with hot-swap 
drives, dual redundant power supplies, a floor-standing UPS, and all the 
rest. It still didn't cost anywhere near what a rack-mountable setup 
would cost.

My original point was, /anything/ sold as rack mountable seems to 
suddenly jump drastically in price, regardless of whether it's anything 
special beyond having the necessary mounting points.

Heck, a USB keyboard costs, what, £2 maybe? Oh, but if you want a 
keyboard draw for a rack? Suddenly it isn't £2 any more. More like £200. 
Sure, the draw runners clearly cost money. Do they cost £198? I don't 
think so.

> Maybe besides size there are other factors to consider... Let's compare
> a "home" unit, vs. a rackmountable unit of the same power rating and
> same supplier.
>
> "Home" UPS
>
> Output capacity: 450W/750VA.
> Run time @400W: 3 min.
> Run time @100W: 40 min.
> Recharge time: 16 hrs.
> Alarms: power/on battery/replace battery led display.
> Management: N/A
> Price: ~100$
>
> "Rackmountable" UPS
>
> Output capacity: 480W/750VA.
> Run time @400W: 8 min.
> Run time @100W: 50 min.
> Recharge time: 4 hrs.
> Alarms: Audible alarms when on battery/low battery/Replace battery
> Management: vis DB-9, RS-232, SmartSlot or USB. Network management card
> optional.
> Price: ~500$
>
> So the rackmountable unit recharges 4x faster and has much better
> management capabilities - I mean what good does a LED display do you in
> an unattended server room? - for 5x the price. Seems reasonable to me.
>
> The "entry-level" rackmountable unit has a lot more to offer than the
> "top-of-the-line" standalone unit, besides mounting brackets.

I don't see why management facilities should cost 5x extra. If somebody 
can make something as complex as a mobile phone and sell it for £10, 
building something which closes a connection when a voltage goes below a 
threshold can't be that damned expensive.

I don't know why there's such a massive difference in recharge time. 
Since I don't know what's different about the second unit which allows 
it to recharge so much faster, I can't say whether or not that justifies 
the price difference.

>> Buy a 12-port desktop switch. £30, maybe? Now buy a rack mountable one.
>> That'll be £200 please. Sure, it's physically bigger. There's more metal
>> in it. Metal costs money. But does it cost /that/ much money?
>
> What's the MTBF of your 30$ desktop switch?

Isn't MTBF an arbitrarily-chosen marketing number?

> Does it have remote management capabilities?

Unlikely. (Although not impossible, believe it or not.) But then, for 
£200 your rack mount unit probably won't either.

> What about problem diagnostics? How many
> packets per second can it process? Does it support vlans? QoS? PPPoE?
> 802.1x authentication? Etc...

Same statements as per management.

>> (Before anyone asks - no, just because it can be rack mounted, that does
>> /not/ mean it has management features. When I joined the company, we had
>> a whole rack full of switches, all rack mounted, none of them managed.
>> And all about £400 each.)
>
> Not manageABLE or simply not managed? Also [citation needed] brand and
> model?

No management features. You just plug them in, turn them on, and they 
work. (Once they finished learning MAC addresses, anyway...)

I don't recall the exact model off the top of my head. They were 
definitely SMC "EZ switch", but I can't remember the precise model 
numbers. A mixture of 12-port and 24-port units.

>> Redundant power supplies cost extra. RAID controllers cost extra.
>> Hot-swap drive bays cost extra. And yet, a server that has these costs
>> nowhere near as much as a rack-mount server.
>
> [citation needed] Brand and model?

A cursory inspection of the nearest product catalogue indicates that the 
starting price for a HP server is about £200, while the cheapest 
possible rack-mountable unit is £400. Which, actually, isn't nearly as 
bad as I'd expected. (I was thinking nearer £2,000. It /is/ HP, after all.)

>> Now sure, making something
>> like a server actually small enough to be rack mounted is nontrivial.
>> There's a reason laptops cost 5x the price of a similar desktop. I
>> understand that. But for goodness' sake, if you make a /wire clamp/
>> that's rack mountable, suddenly it goes from being £2 to £80. It's like
>> it's a license to print money...
>
> Then make one and sell it for only £50 and drive the £80-clamp guy out
> of business, if it's that easy.

It just seems that being rack-mountable is one of those "premium" 
features that makes manufacturers instantly put the price up, just 
because they can.

It's like printers with network cards. A network card costs, what, 
£0.0016? And yet, a printer without one is £30 or something, but one 
with it is £150. Presumably because they figure that your average home 
user doesn't give a fig whether there's a network card, they just want 
the cheapest one in the shop, but your average business user cannot 
afford to do without one, and won't think twice about splashing a few 
hundred pounds for something they actually need...

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