Is there no market for it? I know LimeTech used to sell them and there were some other vendors but all have stopped, so I'm guessing there were no buyers since this is still primarily an enthusiast market,  and the margins were too slim.

 

IMO unRaid with something like CA plugin is quite close in ease of use or capability to Synology/Qnap, and those are at least 2x as expensive.

IMHO, it's because nobody wants the headache of

(a) supporting a product they can't directly control. Suppose an unraid upgrade causes a previously supported board to not work. The customer would want somebody to fix it, but wouldn't want to pay more.

(b) fighting to justify a markup that would be needed to sustain a business because of ramifications of (a)

 

There is a market, but not a sustainable business model. Commodity PC hardware has no margin left, and people don't want to pay for support.

Although your premise is mostly correct -- i.e. there are certainly no actively-advertised commercial vendors -- it does seem that Greenleaf is still selling UnRAID servers:  http://greenleaf-technology.com/

Seems to me there might be one niche that could be worth it - selling gamer-ready boxes, fully configured, with an unRAID Trial license, with one Windows 10 VM installed (ready for activation), perhaps some other VM's and Dockers too, with 2 or 3 GPU's installed and working.  Then you have added value you can charge for.  Provide a 30 day warranty and support, but no more than that, and it might be worth it.  You would need to settle on a set of proven hardware and configuration settings, and burn each system in.

 

Then you could advertise a high end version, ready for 7 gamers!  Might not sell many but should provide great PR.

I think another contributing factor is that by definition a lot of us are "tinkerers" and well versed in building our own computers from scratch.  I for one haven't bought an off the shelf desktop/server for at least 17 years. 

I for one haven't bought an off the shelf desktop/server for at least 17 years.

I didn't even know you could buy a computer off the shelf 

I for one haven't bought an off the shelf desktop/server for at least 17 years.

I didn't even know you could buy a computer off the shelf 

 

Do you suppose it would be next to the Jack Daniel's or the Vodka?

I think if people want an 'off the shelf' solution they are going to buy a name brand NAS like QNap or Synology primarily for network storage. Virtualization is not quite at the point yet where you can click on a template and then click on build and presto you have a working VM. There is still quite a bit of knowledge and know how required and even then stuff doesn't necessarily work. The DIY nature of unRAID I think is what attracts most of us to it, and certainly all the extra features added with V6.

I for one haven't bought an off the shelf desktop/server for at least 17 years.

I didn't even know you could buy a computer off the shelf 

 

Do you suppose it would be next to the Jack Daniel's or the Vodka?

 

If you go into our big box retailer for a PC, you'd probably be better off taking some alcohol before hand, just to numb the pain....

I think another contributing factor is that by definition a lot of us are "tinkerers" and well versed in building our own computers from scratch.  I for one haven't bought an off the shelf desktop/server for at least 17 years.

 

I am this guy. Always built my own pc's after tons of research, hand picking components, being obsessive about the build etc. Its a fun hobby.

 

Then about 1.5 years ago I bought a Dell in one of their sales for about 60% of what it'd cost just for the components. I can't overclock it and it has less expansion bays, the bios isn't fancy UEFI GUI, but other than that its just as good, smaller, silent and I've been very happy.I realized if you keep your pc for even 2-3 years, things change enough that its just not worth it to keep old components around (except case and PSU).

 

The fact that Synlogy/Qnap etc can sell tells me there is a market and its a matter of branding. But the marketing/support costs are probably very high in such a business.