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 $520. That’s a 57% markup for an already marked-up item.
Is the HL15 and accessories really geared toward homelabbers?
Man, I saw 800 for the case and thought it was not bad, honestly, with the backplane. This is not from China. It’s from Canada and made in country. I’m not sure what people here expected. 400 dollars? 200 dollars? 800 for the Case, and the backplane is reasonable due to where it has been manufactured. Sure, you can get another case for 200 or 300 dollars or DIY your own, then do that. China is cheap. If I hadn’t built another NAS already for a truenas server, I would pull the trigger on this.
Downvote away.
Completely agree. I’m not sure why people expected the price to be competitive with retired enterprise gear from eBay. It’s a premium product, made by a small company in Canada, for an extremely niche audience.
Personally, while I haven’t ordered one myself, I’m glad there are more options available that aren’t made out of riveted sheet metal and flimsy plastic.
To be fair , they design and manufacture the case in canada … so it makes sense that it’ll be a little more expensive than when you get the labor done in china
And yeah when you compare it to synology , i guess you still get more bang for the buck … but YMMV
Don’t worry, they have a lot of shelves too.
I’m assuming it’s because they are in Canada, and prices tend to be higher there.
They need to find a US warehouse to ship to US customers.
I always buy used NICs and HBAs off eBay, way cheaper even if I had to replace it on my dime.
45 drives is in Canada? Interesting. I did not know that.
Why on earth are sas cables 30$? What’s so expensive about sas cable when sata cables are like 2$
I bought the full build, no sales tax/ shipping, just a 61.77 international fee. :). Definitely would not buy anything on the estore though because can just google and get it cheaper :).
sounds like they’re probably selling off leftover inventory from customer builds.
these parts wouldn’t make great sense for a 15-bay, but for a 45-bay probably right at home.
$30 for a 3D printed 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, lol. That’s like 30 cents of parts and labour right there. You can even buy those made of steel for a few bucks because it’s so easy to make…
Is there an easy way to buy the 45 bay chassis bare? i dont want to use the daughter boards, i really just want a case that can hold more than 28 drives. honestly i just want the metal chassis and front/back panels, but im sure they would charge $$$.
Laughably high price on the chasis and backplane. More expensive than a Norco 24 bay with less features. They didn’t seem to have read what people wanted in their thread.
They read the ones that agreed with what they already wanted to make
I think they are aiming for “cool stuff, easy mode” for those that want to pay for it.
That’s great and all, but if you’re creative there’s cheaper things you can do. Which to me that’s more fun anyways.
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
Their pricing assumes that homelab enthusiasts are all famous YouTubers who either get free hardware or have cash to burn. Nonsensical indeed.
Those prices are so far out of reality, compared to their MSRP counterparts from some basic online retailers selling the exact same part. Well over 2x markup in some cases (those Seagate drives, for example).
Hard pass.
It’s not cheap to operate a business in Canada