Servers from 45 Drives are very affordable for companies. Unfortunately not so much for private customers, but that's simply because we're a bit spoiled and used to lower prices.
I don't see the point in something like the HL15 when for half the price of the bare chassis I can get a refurb Supermicro 846 with redundant PSUs, 24 disks in 4u instead of 15 etc. Don't even need to replace the chassis when you upgrade like you would a Dell or HP, because it takes any generation of Supermicro board or even a generic ATX board (if you adapt the front panel connector).
@@woe2you2 I'm not a fan of using used enterprise hardware for a home lab because it is primarily designed for the requirements of a data center. Low power consumption and low noise are two of my criteria, for example and data center hardware doesn't match any of these criteria. The HL15 wouldn't be for me either, but the HL8 or HL4 would be more interesting. Unfortunately, I live in Germany and shipping from Canada and taxes are a factor I have to consider.
@@andreas.grundler Yeah, I stick to Dell PowerEdge, 13th gen is great. Not too bad on power too, but that's mostly because I'm used to it. Parts are readily available and fairly cheap. I gotta hunt for cheap parts from time to time, I usually buy more than I need for a parts closet basically. But the way I think of it, if I can get 10 years out of a Rx30 series server thats great. I currently use 2xR430+1xR730 for hypervisors, R730xd(12-bay)+4xMD1200 for DAS and a R730xd(24-port) for an SSD DAS. And an R630 for PBS backups.
As an enterprise IT guy, they definitely are not expensive at all when compared to large SAN vendors like HP, Dell, NetApp, PureStorage. I haven't yet had a chance to deploy 45Drives in production, but I certainly would consider it for certain use cases.
@@fred-2.7182 there are normal storage servers out there with drawers or other ways to access disks ;) 2 rows of disks, first loading from front, second from top or… from front - I saw 2 ways to access: one is angled second row so you can access those, second we used (don’t recommend…) is sliding 2 disks at once. That’s quite normal tech for 2012 for such amount of disks… ;)
45drives guys are great, I wish to buy their homelab hardware but I'm from Europe, which makes hardware, taxes and shipment cost skyrocketing... BTW I'm not Windows 11, I'm Opensuse
I find the price point very on point. Because brand new there’re no competitors I mean go buy a storage appliance from HPE or Dell EMC it will be time 4+. And not only the hardware but the support for firmware updates (I look at you HPE). For people buying old used stuff it may be not worth it but if I had to buy new I would choose them.
I bought a Q30 over two years ago, and the entire time they helped me out, every question, every idea, they gave me specs so I could buy a different cooler determined 4U coolers are just a few mm too tall. Then I swapped out the ATX PSU for dual redundant, the whole process while expensive, they hands down helped me for a good 6 months post purchase. I loved it, now that the server sits in a family members basement while I'm deployed overseas, it's still a fun system to remote into, and play with.
The main thing with HoustonUI is the fact its just a glorified Cockpit UI And Cockpit is great in a simple environment but majority of us home labbers want to tinker with more than it can offer. In the business space for an average IT guy to manage though it is probably great. Simple and effective.
in my opinion if they want to appeal to homelabers they have to knock the prices down a bit and make their products available within europe so we don't have to pay ~20% taxes on already expensive equipement
I own a small local studio - it was owned by a pretty big producer then I purchased and took it over. We picked up two StorinatorXL60s that each hold 1 Petabyte+ and they are absolutely amazing. Ours holds 1P in HDDs and about 200TB in SDD currently. Just wanted to add - we are using two fully built Falcon Northwest RAKs as our main computers. The 96 core is an absolute MONSTER.
One thing i have learnt about human nature, our minds are programmed to believe something is of good quality when it is expensive and companies take advantage of this and over price their products and it would surprise you to that most of these unpopular affordable brands perform just as good as those expensive popular brands and sometimes even better... so hey man you were wise to go in for 45Drives and i believe its not only saved you money but its working just fine
First, thanks for recognizing how being wined and dined may bias your opinion. Second, as a homelabber I’ve struggled with the idea of getting the HL15 (even almost bought one). With shipping and rails it’s way north of $1000. I can get two nice Sliger cases for thesame price. I understand build quality is excellent with HL15, but these cases sit in a rack. Overbuilding provides very little benefit. 45 Drives seem like a great company, but I don’t think they hit the mark with the HL15 (love the top loading drive bays though!)
I kind of like 45Drive's products, they seem well built and the price on its own wouldn't be an issue for me. But being from Europe, you have to add shipping and taxes and at this point the prices are just unreasonable high. A good example of how it can work is Sliger. They are are probably more focused towards consumers instead of enterprises, just recently got into the NAS/server space and don't produce backplanes but they are also a rather small company. They work with an EU based reseller and I can get their cases at a reasonable price compared to the US. I think that this would be a step for 45Drives to expand their market.
What would be cool to see from 45 drives ( i know its not there area) is a nice super low power 1u node. Something a bit better than an N305 but that also supports a few U.2 drives . That would be a nice proxmox node for a cluster and CEPH.
I think that 45 drives is doing good things for the enterprise market. It's pretty exciting to have options that scale that far from a company that is still small enough to be nimble. The downside as home labbers is the smaller budget. coupled to the fact that initial buy in cost typically trumps long term support due to life cycles within our networks, etc. I love what 45 drives is doing. I hope they can sustain it.
It blows me away seeing americans call a 400+ employee company "small" Like... whats an enterprise? 400+ employees based on average 80k salary is like 30+ million dollars a year in just wages In Aus we are talking medium size business at like 50-100 people then large-enterprise above that ha!
It's based on an old version of cockpit, but the main drawback is the zfs plugin. It hasn't seen any real development for a while and it has lots of issues around speed, especially if you have many datasets and / or pools. The virtualisation tab is very basic and the machines it generates could do with better option (eg iothreads, CPU pinnin io_uring, common tweak for windows guests...) but that's a non-45drives module. The whole thing does the job well enough though.
@@RaidOwl yep I think their products especially case material and thickness will last longer than many cheaper China made product and if you see it as a long term investment it will always win in the long run (upgradable and replaceable parts) Just the initial startup cost is a bit pain. Their stackable plan might be legit for some users and get what they need
I'm paying happily more for a device where I do not have any restrictions. Still, I do not own 45 Drives stuff because it was too expensive for me for now and I wanted to explore more with 3D printing. However, I'm pretty positive that I'm going to buy a 45 drives server in the near to mid future (talking 1-3 years). It's not just about cost - it's also about simplicity at a certain point. The HL8 really looks great!
I'd love to see the kind of work 45 Drives could do with gaming rig or workstation cases. I can almost see it already: high quality, modular, clear documentation for you to put in whatever hardware you want...
yeah. enterprise storage are way more expensive than 45 Drives. around 30-40% than cost of enterprise one. I once compared them. But I ended up buying HPE one because of peace of mind in data storage and reliability. It was blazing fast draining the money. LOL.
I'd like to see a 2U short depth chassis. Something that I could fit in my network rack, with 8 to maybe 16 front two and a half inch drive bays, using a matx motherboard with two pcie risers, and room for three full height cards. I can see it in my head, I just don't have the fabrication ability.
what you say about large companies and cost /expense compared to HP/ DELL EMC, ETC 45 drives I would assume is considerably cheaper. I applaud their foray into home lab market and I hope they are successful.
It's an interesting argument. I've never price compared their stuff to actual enterprise hardware. One thing I would predict is something like a Dell server would feel more refined in comparison despite its limitations. I may have some bias but I've always felt the Supermicro stuff I've worked with has felt clunky compared to Dell/HPe. I wonder if that would be the same for 45 drives.
I was gonna pull the plug on HL15 just to realize it had gone up in price by a 100 USD… let’s hope the price doesn’t increase faster than I can save up in this economy. One cool thing is that the shipping should be free if they haven’t changed that as well, still a hassle for EU customer like me with having to pay import fees and extra taxes… feeling very conflicted. 🤔
More than the obvious connection between a sponsored meet-n-greet and positive commentary on a company, it's the consistent excuses for their ridiculous prices that I find baffling. Many of the same channels advocating repurposed hardware and low-cost solutions are all somehow making excuses for a company selling cases for more than most of us have in our entire systems excluding storage. I get that you're not that guy, but you're the exception. I fully support the idea behind DeMicrosoftification, and 45 drives builds some really cool stuff. My NAS is in an old desktop case, and I'm out of drive slots.. so I'm in the market and have seen what's out there. $600 for an 8 bay ITX NAS case? Limited to Flex ATX supplies?? With NO provision for SSDs??? Just.. No.
Unfortunately there's going to be this issue with every company regardless of size. Most of the time excuses sound better than the actual reasons. And having real people do the work drives that price up. I personally cannot see the utility in paying that much for a nice looking case/prebuilt PC platform server in a nice looking case when I can get several running or refurbished retired enterprise servers for the same price. I also sort of feel that most home lab folks try to give themselves too much room to grow when they don't need that much. I also feel that too many engineers in IT forget that you don't always need the bleeding edge latest and greatest to fit a usage case. I personally have a friend of a friend that built out an i9 with 32gb RAM and 24tb HDD to use as a web server because he wanted it to be "good". My step kid wants to be a computer engineer and my first lesson to him was being able to come in under budget on a project will earn you more points with an employer than serving them tech that they don't actually need (as long as they don't specify request it) The reply is becoming a rant. But what I'm getting at is, the 45 drives servers are cool and all, but it's more power than I need when I can get away with a used r720 with a datacenter os and a few used single Xeon machines on the network for HA with my critical services. I could do three of my setups for the same price as the HL15 case by itself.
@@Psikeomega I'd be willing to pay more for a NA made good quality NAS case. But Silverstone isn't exactly junk, and you can get them in the $200 ballpark. I'd go maybe $300 for something comparable that's NA made.. but I've no need to hold up a truck with my NAS case. Less gimmick, more value. Maybe I'll just put the Silverstone in my basement, put a 45 Drives sticker on it, turn off the light and show people pictures of an HL15... tell them that's my server. Then, take the difference and buy a cluster of N100 mini-pcs to run HA services on. I could even velcro them to the top of the NAS!!
@@cameronfrye5514 I mean, if I had the income and maybe was a business that gave tours of my facility, I would gladly take groups past racks with 45 drives systems. Most other rack servers are pretty ugly. But right now I'm an enthusiast that worked 10 years in IT before I left. I'm willing to trade good looks for functionality. And in all truth and fairness, as an enthusiast, I know other people, the looks, or manufacturing are going to matter to them. I used to enjoy having a beautiful computer for a while and paid a lot of money to build it. It might be the autism talking (I actually am) but I get the cringe when I see people RGB their rack.
I have an HL15, I also dropped Houston for TrueNAS Scale. I would have loved to do simple shares, S3, backups, iSCSI, etc., you know out of the box NAS stuff but the "out of the box" experience required far too much RHEL, I mean Rocky, knowledge, their offering should be more of a turnkey solution.
I see them like a company for small businesses like RUclipsrs for example. Which isn't a bad thing, but if my setup isn't making me money adopting a 45drives product isn't justifiable for me at their prices. But I do enjoy seeing their product and hope they keep growing and expanding and someday give poor bastards like me a chasis like the Jonsbo N5 with competitive prices which will be a drop of quality from enterprise level to home use.
Personally I think their prices are quite high and the hardware they're offering isn't that good. The HL15 for example costs more than a 24-bay 4U with a SAS-Expander backplane. Kinda meh to be honest.
@@joelv4495 It certainly is less noisy stock, but you can get 24-bay enterprise chassis with standard 120mm fan-wall in the middle and 60-80mm exhaust fans that you can just switch out. Personally I have one that even takes a standard ATX power supply for $200 less than the HL15, and it has 24 disk bays and a SAS expander. (Manufacturer, Gooxi)
On the cost thing. Sure they are competitive with new dell, hp, etc. hardware. But in the homelab thats not what basically anyone is buying. The HLl15 and HL8 are competing with a johnsbo and sliger cases, and ebay supermicro chassis. On the full build side with those cases and either a consumer platform (i3 or n100) or a used hedt (threadripper) or used enterprise (xeon, epyc). As others have pointed out you can get 3 johnsbo's or 2.x sligers for the price of an HL chassis.
45 drive alway seems expensive for me because i looked at it from a homelaber perspective, and Dell servers that i've bought are not expensive at all second hand compare to brand new product. I i had one say the luck to try them, maybe i would have fun with it. Btw, would that be a good idea to have a demo of their OS on their website ? With fake emulated hardware behind it, i think that would be cool
I'd love to seem them do a different range (under a different brand) targeting people who want a chassis to build a case around. I can get a piece of MDF, screw in a metal bracket, screw other brackets to that bracket, screw PC component bits (motherboard, disks, fans etc) into the metal brackets. Help people who want to make their own custom things by providing the materials. modular, flatpack. I'm not obsessed by the tiniest case, but I might want to build a frame and enclose it using wood which matches my home decor. Help me with the frame, sound and vibration insulation and attaching PC bits to a frame and a frame to my own idea of a case. I don't need my PC to be pretty on the inside, but sometimes I want a pretty exterior and sometimes I simply don't care what it looks like at all.
I remember few years ago when i started watching your channel (3-4 years ago) thinking to myself... this guys ALL-right, O-K... not great... especially considering all the big boys out there... but I kept watching... your content kept getting better... feel like you kinda found you own niche now... but nearly 100k subscribers now.... and 20 seconds into the video seeing YOUR face next to "the big boys" of youtube tech reviews... you should be proud of yourself for believing in yourself and sticking with it.... keep with it Raid Owl...
I like the company, I like the offering, I am drooling over the product, I have a need for a larger NAS in my home lab, I just cannot afford it. I even have a pre-order for an HL8 in and I’m not sure I’ll be able to purchase it once it’s available.
Would love a 45Drives Homelab case. But its simply out of my price range and Shipping + taxes make it worse. I can pick up a used dell server for around £200-£300 If they can drop the price and add distribution in the EU that would help massivly. But I agree there products do look great quality
I do love small businesses. But that being said for what you get, it’s still way overpriced. Even for a small business. You could buy new enterprise equipment or instead if you’re a small business, you don’t need anything fancy you can always go used. I’m a computer repair technician and I have been one for almost 20 years. I have never once seen anyone own anything from 45 drives. The only people I see using their equipment are RUclipsrs. In my experience, I’ve seen new enterprise equipment and used and the rare occasion somebody has some thing they built their self. The only plus that I see if you can afford their products, the hardware would be easy to repair an upgrade. But if it’s just standard hardware and free software, you could just buy your own stuff for fraction of the price. All the big RUclipsrs mostly make their money from sponsored content, not ads. So of course, they have a bias. They either get free products or get money on top of the content. So whenever I see videos like this, I take them with the large grain of salt. Personally, if I could afford something from 45 drives, I wouldn’t buy it. I would rather build something my own and I have.
I completely agree with your statement. One might expect the prices to be lower since they're manufacturing their own products from scratch, but instead, that's where they impose their premium. Ultimately, the origin of the product is less important to me, as the internal components are likely sourced from China or Taiwan, and even the machinery and materials used to manufacture the cases are probably from China. What truly matters to me is how I spend my money. These days, it seems like much of the content on RUclips is more about sponsored promotions than genuine reviews, with companies providing free products in exchange for favorable coverage. I’ve never made a purchase because of a RUclips video; in fact, I’ve only refrained from buying something after watching one.😀
I don't know if I would want yet another open source storage distro. I think I would rather them bring the cool stuff they are doing to other platforms though. So more just to add the features to Truenas Scale, Proxmox, and XCP-NG instead of just giving us another one to choose from.
That "home client" machine is such a joke. Costs more than a Mac Mini M2 and sports a N97 processor, 8 GB ram, & 250 GB storage... I don't care if the case can prop up 2000 lbs. It's an office machine. Even advertised as such. Just a total mismatch. Change the advertising. Change the target audience. Change the price. Change the processing power. Do anything. As it stands, it is literally a case study of what not to do in advertising.
Yeah, that is nuts. It's essentially a mini PC that you can pick up on Amazon for a couple hundred bucks (or less) in a custom chassis. What does it matter if it's super strong if it's sitting on a desk, or better yet, VESA mounted?
First rule of 45 drives is that you don't talk about 45 drives... OK, seriously, there's no business in low-end equipment for homelabbers, at least not at first. And homelabbers don't buy support usually. Ultimately , IMO, 45 Drives should work on both ends of the market - No, don't compete with Corsair or even Falcon NW, but maybe something closer to Fractal with some better internals a-la Supermicro backplanes, etc. Enterprise and, let's call it "enthusiast" aren't the same, but there could be a lot of overlap. The HL-15 is a good start, but still can't compete with me buying a 4 year-old Supermicro tower or rack. As a business I'm either going to buy what I have (Dell, HP, Supermicro, Lenovo usually) or I'm willing to look at alternate solutions that I perceive as reliable but maybe saves me a bit of cash (45 Drives). As a test market (and as a professional product owner myself) I would start with a premium tower case, hot swap-able bays (five to twelve), tool less operations, and a choice of storage backplanes (SAS, SATA, nvme, mixed?) and swappable power (options for standard AT power perhaps). MB support should range from M-ITX to E-ATX for obvious reasons, and keep cooling flexible within the physical limits. Until recently liquid cooling wasn't a thing in enterprise, but it could be in this range - allow for the radiators at least. I see a family of cases, maybe two physical sizes or 4 if you want to enter the mini-server market, and some modular components - They could offer MB's maybe, but not necessary at first I think. Keep a full configuration around $500 with power, standard fans, and storage backplane and I think that's a winner. Oh, and call me if you want to hire me! :-)
@@cdnron75 Wasn't aware of them, thanks! First glance at their catalog, maybe not quite as "high end" as 45 Drives stuff, but looks decent. Their NAS cases seem to have some kind of captive backplane.
its such a hard battle, great company with higher prices vs shit company with lower prices, the lower prices almost always win. we have seen it in so many markets. company comes in with made in USA or made in house or local and puts a huge push on that but is double to triple the price and every single time ive seen it atleast its failed or stayed small. if the product is too expensive for 80% of the market then it will never be the go to option. unless homelabs and self hosting becomes mainstream, i dont see how 45homelab can capture a large part of the market. they need a $500ish out the door option. not a heres a case for $800. i think a "value" line of their homelab products would be a big hit.
Yep people tend to vote with their wallets more than their heart/ethics…and I don’t blame them. Living is expensive. I don’t think 45 Homelab is ever gonna capture a large market share and they know that but if enough people keep buying it they’ll keep making cool stuff.
I am with an organization currently in the process of buying our first 45drives CEPH cluster. I think that is where the money really is, not home or creator users. As a company they should focus on the money making side. I think the home and creator side is great, but they will have a hard time with competition. I say enjoy their "high-end to the home" products, but recognize they probably make them because people that work there want them. Their big win is as a leader in CEPH clusters, which is out of scope for most homeland environments as a serious storage option. I love your vids and content, I've been eating up the 45Drives stuff.
Agreed, I think they price themselves out of the consumer market with their pricing so aiming at enterprise would be fitting, and if their stuff is as good as is claimed, business would likely bite the hook a lot more readily than budget diy homelabbers
1 thing i dont understand is, why is it possible for some Producers to Sell a 3u case for 80€ and 45 wants 899? If there would be a 199 isch case i would buy it but 899€ for just the case is Not realy a homelab price
Let me please fix this videos script.. So it all started from one drive, quickly got to 2 drives….. and that’s why they have 45 drives now, it has been a long journey but we got there!!
Servers from 45 Drives are very affordable for companies. Unfortunately not so much for private customers, but that's simply because we're a bit spoiled and used to lower prices.
I don't see the point in something like the HL15 when for half the price of the bare chassis I can get a refurb Supermicro 846 with redundant PSUs, 24 disks in 4u instead of 15 etc. Don't even need to replace the chassis when you upgrade like you would a Dell or HP, because it takes any generation of Supermicro board or even a generic ATX board (if you adapt the front panel connector).
@@woe2you2 I'm not a fan of using used enterprise hardware for a home lab because it is primarily designed for the requirements of a data center. Low power consumption and low noise are two of my criteria, for example and data center hardware doesn't match any of these criteria.
The HL15 wouldn't be for me either, but the HL8 or HL4 would be more interesting. Unfortunately, I live in Germany and shipping from Canada and taxes are a factor I have to consider.
Shit is overpriced. You can grab any supermicro chassis and service it years later.
@@CharizardSnyper No need to be rude. The market is big enough for everyone. If you like Supermicro cases better then go for it.
@@andreas.grundler Yeah, I stick to Dell PowerEdge, 13th gen is great. Not too bad on power too, but that's mostly because I'm used to it. Parts are readily available and fairly cheap. I gotta hunt for cheap parts from time to time, I usually buy more than I need for a parts closet basically. But the way I think of it, if I can get 10 years out of a Rx30 series server thats great. I currently use 2xR430+1xR730 for hypervisors, R730xd(12-bay)+4xMD1200 for DAS and a R730xd(24-port) for an SSD DAS. And an R630 for PBS backups.
As an enterprise IT guy, they definitely are not expensive at all when compared to large SAN vendors like HP, Dell, NetApp, PureStorage. I haven't yet had a chance to deploy 45Drives in production, but I certainly would consider it for certain use cases.
Personally I hate the form factor :/
I would really like to see offering with front hot-swap bays like in any other servers.
@@morsikplThey actually do, the proximator server does have that
@@fred-2.7182 there are normal storage servers out there with drawers or other ways to access disks ;) 2 rows of disks, first loading from front, second from top or… from front - I saw 2 ways to access: one is angled second row so you can access those, second we used (don’t recommend…) is sliding 2 disks at once.
That’s quite normal tech for 2012 for such amount of disks… ;)
45drives guys are great, I wish to buy their homelab hardware but I'm from Europe, which makes hardware, taxes and shipment cost skyrocketing...
BTW I'm not Windows 11, I'm Opensuse
I find the price point very on point. Because brand new there’re no competitors I mean go buy a storage appliance from HPE or Dell EMC it will be time 4+. And not only the hardware but the support for firmware updates (I look at you HPE). For people buying old used stuff it may be not worth it but if I had to buy new I would choose them.
I bought a Q30 over two years ago, and the entire time they helped me out, every question, every idea, they gave me specs so I could buy a different cooler determined 4U coolers are just a few mm too tall. Then I swapped out the ATX PSU for dual redundant, the whole process while expensive, they hands down helped me for a good 6 months post purchase. I loved it, now that the server sits in a family members basement while I'm deployed overseas, it's still a fun system to remote into, and play with.
The main thing with HoustonUI is the fact its just a glorified Cockpit UI
And Cockpit is great in a simple environment but majority of us home labbers want to tinker with more than it can offer.
In the business space for an average IT guy to manage though it is probably great. Simple and effective.
in my opinion if they want to appeal to homelabers they have to knock the prices down a bit and make their products available within europe so we don't have to pay ~20% taxes on already expensive equipement
Agreed, it’s gonna be tough to capture a larger market
20% is a dream.. In Brazil we have a 65% taxes on imports (can you imagine?)
@@ti4go 65% ? Holy Smokes, I feel bad for you guys
@@ti4go at least your politicians are doing the important stuff like...banning X
I own a small local studio - it was owned by a pretty big producer then I purchased and took it over. We picked up two StorinatorXL60s that each hold 1 Petabyte+ and they are absolutely amazing. Ours holds 1P in HDDs and about 200TB in SDD currently.
Just wanted to add - we are using two fully built Falcon Northwest RAKs as our main computers. The 96 core is an absolute MONSTER.
who gives a shit
@@toseltreps1101
I do, I love my setup.
I know you will never own something like that, it's okay.
One thing i have learnt about human nature, our minds are programmed to believe something is of good quality when it is expensive and companies take advantage of this and over price their products and it would surprise you to that most of these unpopular affordable brands perform just as good as those expensive popular brands and sometimes even better... so hey man you were wise to go in for 45Drives and i believe its not only saved you money but its working just fine
First, thanks for recognizing how being wined and dined may bias your opinion. Second, as a homelabber I’ve struggled with the idea of getting the HL15 (even almost bought one). With shipping and rails it’s way north of $1000. I can get two nice Sliger cases for thesame price. I understand build quality is excellent with HL15, but these cases sit in a rack. Overbuilding provides very little benefit. 45 Drives seem like a great company, but I don’t think they hit the mark with the HL15 (love the top loading drive bays though!)
Thanks for the feedback. I know they read all these and consider them for future projects.
I kind of like 45Drive's products, they seem well built and the price on its own wouldn't be an issue for me. But being from Europe, you have to add shipping and taxes and at this point the prices are just unreasonable high. A good example of how it can work is Sliger. They are are probably more focused towards consumers instead of enterprises, just recently got into the NAS/server space and don't produce backplanes but they are also a rather small company. They work with an EU based reseller and I can get their cases at a reasonable price compared to the US. I think that this would be a step for 45Drives to expand their market.
Same with Australia. Shipping is insane. They need intentional distributors
If i could get them from an Norwegian vendor I would get one, but importing is stupid expensive and not worth it
What would be cool to see from 45 drives ( i know its not there area) is a nice super low power 1u node. Something a bit better than an N305 but that also supports a few U.2 drives . That would be a nice proxmox node for a cluster and CEPH.
Protocase (the same company) will build you a box if you want. You’d have to design it though.
@@andljoy I wish they had matching 1U, 2U, 3U, and 4U homelab cases. Would definitely push me towards them so my rack would look cleaner.
Great idea!
I think that 45 drives is doing good things for the enterprise market. It's pretty exciting to have options that scale that far from a company that is still small enough to be nimble. The downside as home labbers is the smaller budget. coupled to the fact that initial buy in cost typically trumps long term support due to life cycles within our networks, etc. I love what 45 drives is doing. I hope they can sustain it.
It blows me away seeing americans call a 400+ employee company "small"
Like... whats an enterprise? 400+ employees based on average 80k salary is like 30+ million dollars a year in just wages
In Aus we are talking medium size business at like 50-100 people then large-enterprise above that ha!
I really want to see Huston take off. Also I'd love to see a follow-up next year. Fingers crossed you get invited back.
It's based on an old version of cockpit, but the main drawback is the zfs plugin. It hasn't seen any real development for a while and it has lots of issues around speed, especially if you have many datasets and / or pools. The virtualisation tab is very basic and the machines it generates could do with better option (eg iothreads, CPU pinnin io_uring, common tweak for windows guests...) but that's a non-45drives module. The whole thing does the job well enough though.
Cheaper than other commercial offering doesnt mean it "affordable" for most average person 😂
I never said it was
@@RaidOwl yep
I think their products especially case material and thickness will last longer than many cheaper China made product and if you see it as a long term investment it will always win in the long run (upgradable and replaceable parts)
Just the initial startup cost is a bit pain.
Their stackable plan might be legit for some users and get what they need
I'm paying happily more for a device where I do not have any restrictions. Still, I do not own 45 Drives stuff because it was too expensive for me for now and I wanted to explore more with 3D printing. However, I'm pretty positive that I'm going to buy a 45 drives server in the near to mid future (talking 1-3 years). It's not just about cost - it's also about simplicity at a certain point. The HL8 really looks great!
I'd love to see the kind of work 45 Drives could do with gaming rig or workstation cases. I can almost see it already: high quality, modular, clear documentation for you to put in whatever hardware you want...
Thank you for the feedback - great idea and something we're already looking into!
@@45Drives Bonus points if you guys can do it in a way that might even work for budget builds ;)
Great video, you've got my Sub n Luv. thanks for your time,👍🤘👍
yeah. enterprise storage are way more expensive than 45 Drives. around 30-40% than cost of enterprise one. I once compared them. But I ended up buying HPE one because of peace of mind in data storage and reliability. It was blazing fast draining the money. LOL.
I'd like to see a 2U short depth chassis. Something that I could fit in my network rack, with 8 to maybe 16 front two and a half inch drive bays, using a matx motherboard with two pcie risers, and room for three full height cards. I can see it in my head, I just don't have the fabrication ability.
what you say about large companies and cost /expense compared to HP/ DELL EMC, ETC 45 drives I would assume is considerably cheaper.
I applaud their foray into home lab market and I hope they are successful.
I bought their HL15. I was getting choice paralysis trying to build it myself
It's an interesting argument. I've never price compared their stuff to actual enterprise hardware. One thing I would predict is something like a Dell server would feel more refined in comparison despite its limitations. I may have some bias but I've always felt the Supermicro stuff I've worked with has felt clunky compared to Dell/HPe. I wonder if that would be the same for 45 drives.
I was gonna pull the plug on HL15 just to realize it had gone up in price by a 100 USD… let’s hope the price doesn’t increase faster than I can save up in this economy. One cool thing is that the shipping should be free if they haven’t changed that as well, still a hassle for EU customer like me with having to pay import fees and extra taxes… feeling very conflicted. 🤔
More than the obvious connection between a sponsored meet-n-greet and positive commentary on a company, it's the consistent excuses for their ridiculous prices that I find baffling. Many of the same channels advocating repurposed hardware and low-cost solutions are all somehow making excuses for a company selling cases for more than most of us have in our entire systems excluding storage. I get that you're not that guy, but you're the exception. I fully support the idea behind DeMicrosoftification, and 45 drives builds some really cool stuff. My NAS is in an old desktop case, and I'm out of drive slots.. so I'm in the market and have seen what's out there. $600 for an 8 bay ITX NAS case? Limited to Flex ATX supplies?? With NO provision for SSDs??? Just.. No.
Unfortunately there's going to be this issue with every company regardless of size. Most of the time excuses sound better than the actual reasons. And having real people do the work drives that price up.
I personally cannot see the utility in paying that much for a nice looking case/prebuilt PC platform server in a nice looking case when I can get several running or refurbished retired enterprise servers for the same price. I also sort of feel that most home lab folks try to give themselves too much room to grow when they don't need that much. I also feel that too many engineers in IT forget that you don't always need the bleeding edge latest and greatest to fit a usage case. I personally have a friend of a friend that built out an i9 with 32gb RAM and 24tb HDD to use as a web server because he wanted it to be "good". My step kid wants to be a computer engineer and my first lesson to him was being able to come in under budget on a project will earn you more points with an employer than serving them tech that they don't actually need (as long as they don't specify request it)
The reply is becoming a rant. But what I'm getting at is, the 45 drives servers are cool and all, but it's more power than I need when I can get away with a used r720 with a datacenter os and a few used single Xeon machines on the network for HA with my critical services. I could do three of my setups for the same price as the HL15 case by itself.
@@Psikeomega I'd be willing to pay more for a NA made good quality NAS case. But Silverstone isn't exactly junk, and you can get them in the $200 ballpark. I'd go maybe $300 for something comparable that's NA made.. but I've no need to hold up a truck with my NAS case. Less gimmick, more value. Maybe I'll just put the Silverstone in my basement, put a 45 Drives sticker on it, turn off the light and show people pictures of an HL15... tell them that's my server. Then, take the difference and buy a cluster of N100 mini-pcs to run HA services on. I could even velcro them to the top of the NAS!!
@@cameronfrye5514 I mean, if I had the income and maybe was a business that gave tours of my facility, I would gladly take groups past racks with 45 drives systems. Most other rack servers are pretty ugly. But right now I'm an enthusiast that worked 10 years in IT before I left. I'm willing to trade good looks for functionality. And in all truth and fairness, as an enthusiast, I know other people, the looks, or manufacturing are going to matter to them. I used to enjoy having a beautiful computer for a while and paid a lot of money to build it. It might be the autism talking (I actually am) but I get the cringe when I see people RGB their rack.
I have an HL15, I also dropped Houston for TrueNAS Scale. I would have loved to do simple shares, S3, backups, iSCSI, etc., you know out of the box NAS stuff but the "out of the box" experience required far too much RHEL, I mean Rocky, knowledge, their offering should be more of a turnkey solution.
somebody should finally talk about how some of their products are NOT having 45 drives in them!!!
🤐
Protocase has some cool videos on their RUclips channel, so I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard for 45 Drives to start doing the same.
We actually already have a RUclips page with some cool content as well 😅
I see them like a company for small businesses like RUclipsrs for example. Which isn't a bad thing, but if my setup isn't making me money adopting a 45drives product isn't justifiable for me at their prices. But I do enjoy seeing their product and hope they keep growing and expanding and someday give poor bastards like me a chasis like the Jonsbo N5 with competitive prices which will be a drop of quality from enterprise level to home use.
45drives in dubai media Office
Personally I think their prices are quite high and the hardware they're offering isn't that good. The HL15 for example costs more than a 24-bay 4U with a SAS-Expander backplane. Kinda meh to be honest.
Thanks for your feedback!
Ya, it's a tough market. While I agree that it's hard to compete with used enterprise gear, I suspect the HL15 is significantly less noisy.
@@joelv4495 It certainly is less noisy stock, but you can get 24-bay enterprise chassis with standard 120mm fan-wall in the middle and 60-80mm exhaust fans that you can just switch out. Personally I have one that even takes a standard ATX power supply for $200 less than the HL15, and it has 24 disk bays and a SAS expander. (Manufacturer, Gooxi)
@@joelv4495 Also I was referring to a brand new enterprise chassis, not a used one. If we compare used it's like a third to half the price.
On the cost thing. Sure they are competitive with new dell, hp, etc. hardware. But in the homelab thats not what basically anyone is buying. The HLl15 and HL8 are competing with a johnsbo and sliger cases, and ebay supermicro chassis. On the full build side with those cases and either a consumer platform (i3 or n100) or a used hedt (threadripper) or used enterprise (xeon, epyc). As others have pointed out you can get 3 johnsbo's or 2.x sligers for the price of an HL chassis.
I always saw them as the box company that made Backblazes open storage pods
Same
45 drive alway seems expensive for me because i looked at it from a homelaber perspective, and Dell servers that i've bought are not expensive at all second hand compare to brand new product. I i had one say the luck to try them, maybe i would have fun with it. Btw, would that be a good idea to have a demo of their OS on their website ? With fake emulated hardware behind it, i think that would be cool
Thank you for the feedback - we have a demo on our RUclips page but it's a great idea to update that and get it on our website!
I'd love to seem them do a different range (under a different brand) targeting people who want a chassis to build a case around. I can get a piece of MDF, screw in a metal bracket, screw other brackets to that bracket, screw PC component bits (motherboard, disks, fans etc) into the metal brackets. Help people who want to make their own custom things by providing the materials. modular, flatpack. I'm not obsessed by the tiniest case, but I might want to build a frame and enclose it using wood which matches my home decor. Help me with the frame, sound and vibration insulation and attaching PC bits to a frame and a frame to my own idea of a case. I don't need my PC to be pretty on the inside, but sometimes I want a pretty exterior and sometimes I simply don't care what it looks like at all.
Bruh, I am not Windows 11... but I did watch till the end. Excited to see where 45 Drives goes with their software and hardware.
I remember few years ago when i started watching your channel (3-4 years ago) thinking to myself... this guys ALL-right, O-K... not great... especially considering all the big boys out there... but I kept watching... your content kept getting better... feel like you kinda found you own niche now... but nearly 100k subscribers now.... and 20 seconds into the video seeing YOUR face next to "the big boys" of youtube tech reviews... you should be proud of yourself for believing in yourself and sticking with it.... keep with it Raid Owl...
Trust me…I’m as surprised as you haha
I like the company, I like the offering, I am drooling over the product, I have a need for a larger NAS in my home lab, I just cannot afford it. I even have a pre-order for an HL8 in and I’m not sure I’ll be able to purchase it once it’s available.
Overpriced with no serviceability. My dual socket epyc set up and cse 846 chassis ran me less than $600 usd all in
Would love a 45Drives Homelab case. But its simply out of my price range and Shipping + taxes make it worse. I can pick up a used dell server for around £200-£300 If they can drop the price and add distribution in the EU that would help massivly. But I agree there products do look great quality
Will you be doing a video on the HL8 by any chance? Would love to see an all SSD build with it!
I do love small businesses. But that being said for what you get, it’s still way overpriced. Even for a small business. You could buy new enterprise equipment or instead if you’re a small business, you don’t need anything fancy you can always go used. I’m a computer repair technician and I have been one for almost 20 years. I have never once seen anyone own anything from 45 drives. The only people I see using their equipment are RUclipsrs. In my experience, I’ve seen new enterprise equipment and used and the rare occasion somebody has some thing they built their self. The only plus that I see if you can afford their products, the hardware would be easy to repair an upgrade. But if it’s just standard hardware and free software, you could just buy your own stuff for fraction of the price. All the big RUclipsrs mostly make their money from sponsored content, not ads. So of course, they have a bias. They either get free products or get money on top of the content. So whenever I see videos like this, I take them with the large grain of salt. Personally, if I could afford something from 45 drives, I wouldn’t buy it. I would rather build something my own and I have.
I completely agree with your statement. One might expect the prices to be lower since they're manufacturing their own products from scratch, but instead, that's where they impose their premium. Ultimately, the origin of the product is less important to me, as the internal components are likely sourced from China or Taiwan, and even the machinery and materials used to manufacture the cases are probably from China. What truly matters to me is how I spend my money.
These days, it seems like much of the content on RUclips is more about sponsored promotions than genuine reviews, with companies providing free products in exchange for favorable coverage. I’ve never made a purchase because of a RUclips video; in fact, I’ve only refrained from buying something after watching one.😀
I don't know if I would want yet another open source storage distro. I think I would rather them bring the cool stuff they are doing to other platforms though. So more just to add the features to Truenas Scale, Proxmox, and XCP-NG instead of just giving us another one to choose from.
That "home client" machine is such a joke. Costs more than a Mac Mini M2 and sports a N97 processor, 8 GB ram, & 250 GB storage...
I don't care if the case can prop up 2000 lbs. It's an office machine. Even advertised as such. Just a total mismatch.
Change the advertising. Change the target audience. Change the price. Change the processing power. Do anything. As it stands, it is literally a case study of what not to do in advertising.
Cool, and if they don't sell any then they will lose money and learn from it.
Yeah, that is nuts. It's essentially a mini PC that you can pick up on Amazon for a couple hundred bucks (or less) in a custom chassis. What does it matter if it's super strong if it's sitting on a desk, or better yet, VESA mounted?
I’d love to see a build with the added 2.5 ssd caddy and the new HexOS
Windows 11? That hurts!
We should have stopped the video 20 seconds earlier 😢
First rule of 45 drives is that you don't talk about 45 drives... OK, seriously, there's no business in low-end equipment for homelabbers, at least not at first. And homelabbers don't buy support usually. Ultimately , IMO, 45 Drives should work on both ends of the market - No, don't compete with Corsair or even Falcon NW, but maybe something closer to Fractal with some better internals a-la Supermicro backplanes, etc. Enterprise and, let's call it "enthusiast" aren't the same, but there could be a lot of overlap. The HL-15 is a good start, but still can't compete with me buying a 4 year-old Supermicro tower or rack. As a business I'm either going to buy what I have (Dell, HP, Supermicro, Lenovo usually) or I'm willing to look at alternate solutions that I perceive as reliable but maybe saves me a bit of cash (45 Drives). As a test market (and as a professional product owner myself) I would start with a premium tower case, hot swap-able bays (five to twelve), tool less operations, and a choice of storage backplanes (SAS, SATA, nvme, mixed?) and swappable power (options for standard AT power perhaps). MB support should range from M-ITX to E-ATX for obvious reasons, and keep cooling flexible within the physical limits. Until recently liquid cooling wasn't a thing in enterprise, but it could be in this range - allow for the radiators at least. I see a family of cases, maybe two physical sizes or 4 if you want to enter the mini-server market, and some modular components - They could offer MB's maybe, but not necessary at first I think. Keep a full configuration around $500 with power, standard fans, and storage backplane and I think that's a winner. Oh, and call me if you want to hire me! :-)
You want all of those options, Sliger already does it (minus the backplanes) and they cost less. They also fabricate their cases in North America.
@@cdnron75 Wasn't aware of them, thanks! First glance at their catalog, maybe not quite as "high end" as 45 Drives stuff, but looks decent. Their NAS cases seem to have some kind of captive backplane.
The only ones running 45Drive chassis are the youtubers who pimp overpriced garbage from anyone who will throw 2c their way.
You sound mad 😅
It does seem that way. I think Brett stayed fairly objective in this video though.
Nice ad, still can't afford it though :/
I like the video. I dropped a Like.
If I could find them used on ebay I would have an opinion and leave it here:
Lol noted
its such a hard battle, great company with higher prices vs shit company with lower prices, the lower prices almost always win. we have seen it in so many markets. company comes in with made in USA or made in house or local and puts a huge push on that but is double to triple the price and every single time ive seen it atleast its failed or stayed small. if the product is too expensive for 80% of the market then it will never be the go to option. unless homelabs and self hosting becomes mainstream, i dont see how 45homelab can capture a large part of the market. they need a $500ish out the door option. not a heres a case for $800. i think a "value" line of their homelab products would be a big hit.
i made this comment and my hl15 shows up today. so i am one of the people who purchase from them.
Yep people tend to vote with their wallets more than their heart/ethics…and I don’t blame them. Living is expensive. I don’t think 45 Homelab is ever gonna capture a large market share and they know that but if enough people keep buying it they’ll keep making cool stuff.
So i am a Windows 11 ha ?
We should have stopped the video 20 seconds earlier 😢
I am with an organization currently in the process of buying our first 45drives CEPH cluster. I think that is where the money really is, not home or creator users. As a company they should focus on the money making side. I think the home and creator side is great, but they will have a hard time with competition. I say enjoy their "high-end to the home" products, but recognize they probably make them because people that work there want them. Their big win is as a leader in CEPH clusters, which is out of scope for most homeland environments as a serious storage option.
I love your vids and content, I've been eating up the 45Drives stuff.
Agreed, I think they price themselves out of the consumer market with their pricing so aiming at enterprise would be fitting, and if their stuff is as good as is claimed, business would likely bite the hook a lot more readily than budget diy homelabbers
Is this an ad?
Watch it a few times and subscribe then I’ll tell you
1 thing i dont understand is, why is it possible for some Producers to Sell a 3u case for 80€ and 45 wants 899? If there would be a 199 isch case i would buy it but 899€ for just the case is Not realy a homelab price
30 Grand? Affordable?
Yeah man businesses with real needs aren’t piecing together a system off eBay
Expensive for home labs
Let me please fix this videos script..
So it all started from one drive, quickly got to 2 drives….. and that’s why they have 45 drives now, it has been a long journey but we got there!!
I'm windows 11 ??
😘😘😘
We should have stopped the video 20 seconds earlier 😢
Kinda meh to be honest
Ha! Love the swipe at Crapple
Stop adding those annoying pop sounds.
No
Insert witty comment here.
*sarcastic response*
Another RUclips influencer shilling for 45drives...so disappointing to see you go the way of craft computing.
Shut up
second
First