You could try to ghetto up some (insanely powerful) velcro on the inside of the rack and the surface of the drive, and try to see if it fits your needs.
What a disgusting move from Lenovo’s side. Won’t be purchasing them anything from now on.
That sucks. Nothing more depressing than being unable to fire up a new machine.
Like others suggested, if you can’t find the trays on eBay or through a repair shop, send the units back and take the restocking hit.
We never had any problems getting parts from Dell.
See, Jeff, we told you about having a sysadmin section on Stackoverflow, you didn’t listen. You could have avoided the hassles if you consulted with the community before ordering. 
So … let’s see … do you still think that buying your own hardware is cheaper than paying someone else for hosting it?
That’s brand servers for you, sad to see you being ripped off. If you don’t want to build your own servers with Supermicro (or Tyan) barebones, you can also find many system integrators who will build these for you. You get the benefit of professional work (mostly…) at a modest surcharge and you don’t get locked in and ripped off with prices for parts (you can always order them from somewhere else). These are smaller companies without the visibility (or web presence) of the large vendors, so it takes a while to find them, but they do exist.
Had the same problem with Dell recently.
Spoke with my account rep and he confirmed that they do not sell the rails separately. After complaining about how I can get a 1.5TB ES SATA drive for the same price they are charging me for a 120GB, he relented and gave me a great deal.
Good thing I found out before the order was placed or I would be in the same situation as you, and very pissed.
Two words, man: duct tape.
High five.
@Toothy: I don’t think he said it would be cheaper. He just wanted to have more ‘control’ over it.
But Jeff, I’m surprised that you did not build the servers yourself as usual. That would have been interesting for your audience and you would certainly not have these problems now. So, my advice now is: Return them and build your own.
We buy all our servers from Silicon Mechanics. They use Supermicro so you can easily fiddle with it after the fact but quite honestly between their prices and their attention to detail (even if you order it without an operating system, they still do 24-48 hour burn ins) I just order it exactly the way I want it.
You’re a software guy. Let the experts worry about the hardware. Building a computer at home is one thing. You don’t want your site to come screeching to a halt just because you decided to save $20.
The fact that you’re talking about running the site with just two servers is slightly scary. You’ve got zero redundancy. Good thing it’s not a pay for site.
Jeff, this is standard practice with servers. You can get cheap trays (and server-quality drives) from http://www.discountechnology.com (note only one T)… they are fabulously friendly and helpful.
I don’t know where you got your drives from, but you’re going to want to make sure you bought server grade drives, which usually have a MTBF about five times higher than the el-cheapos you see piled up for $89 apiece at Fry’s.
Almost sounds like a razor-and-blades business model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_business_model
Sell the server relatively cheap, but they stick it to you on hardware you MUST have but they don’t include with the server.
Also reminds me of an old joke I heard years ago - Free bag of groceries, only $50. The groceries were free, but the bag was $50.
I would return the servers on principle. Let them know they can’t get away with that garbage.
As I recall, Larry and Serguei at Google custom-build all their own servers from parts they hand-pick themselves. Maybe you could go that route?
And I seem to remember you making a comment about system administrators knowing just enough to be dangerous…
You can also google for third-party replacement parts. Several companies sells trays as well like http://discountechnology.com .
Also don’t forget the interposer adapter! I know that you need an SATA-SAS backplane adapter card in the tray to add SATA Drives. But dont know what the need is for lenovo.
//andy
Send them back and never every do business with them again. We have GOT to send these companies a message that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable.
Oh, but take a crap in them first.
I salute you sir for not forking over the cash for the drives. This kind of business practice is diseatful and one that will only change if consumers choose to not fall for it.
I use these data center drives for $80 each
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136143
My plan is to buy four extra hard drives at a grand total of $320 and have them sitting in their anti-static bags at the data center ready to plug in when a drive fails (all our 3 servers will use this same drive). That’s much cheaper and faster than paying exorbitant warranty hard drive prices, times the # of drives (10).
Jeff Atwood on December 25, 2008 03:04 PM
Ummm – Jeff? Did you read the comments on the page you linked to? The comments indicate that these drives have an extremely high failure rate. You really sure you want to go with these drives???
Not selling empty drive mounts is a mean habit of many server manufacturers. I had the problem with Dell as well as with Apple.
Maybe you can fetch empty mounts off ebay, that’s where I got mine.
I agree what Lenovo does with these servers is a bit underhanded. But Jeff, you were under informed. You should have done more home work.
You might save some money by doing it your way, but in the long run I think this is very small.
First, the drives you plan to get probably have a higher failure rate than the ones the server company is going to sell you.
Second, trying to get a replacement drive when you are under warranty from newegg or western digital is going to be a much larger hassle than from the server company you bought from. They are set up to ship you a replacement that day or next day. Sometimes they ship ours in the middle of the night before we come in the next day and find a drive has failed.
Third, how much of your time have you already spent on this issue? What is your time worth? I hear you go on about developer efficiency and to buy the proper tools for them because the price is worth it. The same goes for server work sometimes. At what point does your time make up for the added costs of those drives?
Right now you only have a few servers and this might be the right choice for you (I don’t think so, but that is my opinion without knowing all the info you know about your situation). Once you get up to 10, 30, or 50+ maybe your tune will change on this topic. I would love to see if you are continuing this practice at that point.