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
It’s not cheap to operate a business in Canada
They are recommending the 9600-16i because it is new and available. The 9400 series is older and no longer being manufactured. Anything available is either used or new-old stock.
Seriously, they call it a homelab store and are easily charging 40% more than just going to other resellers. Like $90 for a Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2. You can buy them on Amazon for $55 all day long. It’s a dumb card, you have to enable bifurcation on the slot you install it in.
I certainly didn’t build myself a homelab to pay double for everything.
Sorry Marcus, I don’t feel that overburdened by money.
Wouldnt it be possible to take base spec and source cheaper addon parts?
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.
They don’t know their audience
They are targeting rich homelabers.
I don’t think homelabs were ever the intended audience. There are MUCH more price effective, reliable, and performant options over their cases + expanders.
I didn’t look as deeply as you have but I got their email today too and thought “who is this for?”
I was mainly interested in the chassis, and put my gear in it. When I seen the price, I was less excited.
Availability. You can’t get old parts forever.
I’ll just go serverpartdeals/ebay…
The case alone is 800 dollars… a used super micro sever that’s 24 bays is 1600 for something with at the time of this post.
256GB ram 2 x E2630 v3s LSI 12GB controller Rack rails
Why in the hell would I pay 800 dollars for an empty case?
Can’t realistically compare a new product line to a used older tech…they’re just not comparable in price never will be
A new sc846 case costs around 2000 dollars. I get it, I bought a used one for 400 myself and I would never buy a new 45drives but you can’t really compare new and used.
Those drive prices are absolutely absurd, too. $181 for a 4TB drive? Go fuck yourself 45Drives.
I checked a few against CDW and CDW’s list prices are cheaper.
Personally, I don’t think they’re really targeting home labbers, they’re really targeting home / small business (meaning <10-15 employees up to maybe 20 or so) who need the capacity, but also can’t swing the true business prices.
Since someone else mentioned Jeff from Craft Computing, I’ll use him as an example:
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It’s a lot easier to drop money on a server (storage or otherwise) when the server itself and it’s recurring costs (the power usage and the extra HVAC costs) can all be written off as business expenses.
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45D’s prices are still far cheaper than true “enterprise storage” and the headaches they come with (like the relentless sales reps you have to deal with to buy one) with most of the features they’d have (IE - Nimble or any other SAN provider in this case) minus the warranty SLA - obligatory “F@#$ you very much CDW, Dell EMC, and HP”
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On that previous point, yes, you can source parts and build it cheaper. Like any other OEM, what you really pay for is the warranty. Instead of having to deal directly with LSI, Intel or whoever because [component] failed, you call up 45D, given them the unit serial number, and go from there - as my boss likes to say “it’s one throat to choke” - If that storage is vital to your business, downtime costs money squared. Again using Jeff as an example: If he’s screwing with the server off camera, that’s time he probably should have been on camera recording something else. If he is making a video about the issue, then it’s going to take him 3 times longer than it otherwise would have to just fix it (many YouTubers have been vocal about everything taking 3 times longer for the camera than it does to just do it) and at that point, the video is being made as a piece of revenue generating content to try to help offset the cost of the downtime.
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