I’m just curious to get other people’s thoughts on this since 45Drives just recently released their 15-bay rackmount case that’s supposed to be aimed toward the homelab community.
Some of the items being sold in the e-store don’t make sense to purchase, specifically the LSI 9600-16i HBA and the x540 10Gbe NIC.
Why would the top of the line LSI 9600-16i be offered (for $1.1k)? Wouldn’t the more reasonably priced 9400 series card make more sense? I guess this would be if you’re running NVME drives (which the 9400 can also do)? It just seems strange to offer the top of the line and not anything else. Especially when the HL15 is aimed at the homelab community.
Also, the intel x540 network adapter. We go from the most recent, top of the line LSI 9600-16i HBA to a network adapter that was released in 2012 (for which they’re still asking $400 for). Wouldn’t it make more sense to offer the x550, or better yet, the x710-T2L?
I also understand that companies need to make money but the profit margin on these add-ons and accessories seems extreme. For example, the Intel XL710-QDA2 40 gig NIC is being sold for $818 while at FS.com it’s being sold for $520. That’s a 57% markup for an already marked-up item.
Is the HL15 and accessories really geared toward homelabbers?
I work for a large Entertainment company that we were looking at 45 drives and they refused to fill out normal tax paperwork for B2B and ACH as we were going to be doing continual purchases with them just not a 1 off as we have 3 petabytes of storage now with a EMC Isilion that were trying to sunset. The company i found to be polite but not grounded in reality in doing business we don’t want lines of credit with them we want to pay in good old debt free money. oh well . I am glad to see I am not the only one who went WTF when looking at the HL15
We asked for a quote for a small SAN, after the initial email exchange trying to setup a meeting, never heard back and they didn’t reply to any of my attempts to follow up.
The problem is neither one of us are Youtubers. I only need 10 Petabytes so I must be a commoner to them