Hi @urbanracer34,
I am pleased to let you know that our team is currently working on this project and we will keep you updated as soon as we make any final decision.
Hi @Vikram-45Drives ,
I am finding it hard to get information already.
If you can, could you possibly tell us how far along you are on this?
What has been done? What has been set in stone? What are the hardware specs?
I don’t know if you will answer my questions, but I would appreciate it if you could.
Hey @urbanracer34,
I understand your excitement about the new four and eight bay unit.
we currently have prototypes in production. We are working on multiple designs and have not finalized one at this stage.
We wish we could give you more of an update and appreciate your excitement.
Thanks for getting back to me and giving me some info. Yes, I am very excited about this product. 
Hello!
I know prototypes are being worked on.
Is there any chance to get a sneak preview?
I would be willing to test a prototype of the 8-bay model if possible.
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Hey @urbanracer34,
I understand your excitement, and I would be thrilled to share any finalized design with you. Currently we are working on the third proto type design and we have not finalized the design yet. I will definitely let our team know that you have offered to help us test out the proto type.
I will make sure to post about more updates about the 8 and 4 bay units as soon as I receive them, here.
Kindly, give us some more time as we are diligently working on this for our community.
Thank you,
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Afternoon, folks!
We’re about to launch some information in our newsletter update going out in a few minutes. For those not subscribed, here is the latest update:
The team, as Vikram had mentioned, have been working hard on several designs for our next offering: An 8-bay homelab server. We want to build something big, strong, fast with 45HomeLab DNA. But, we also want to build something our community will love.
Here’s a glimpse at some early prototypes. We have plans to create multiple designs of these new servers to give you options to choose from.
Let us know your thoughts of these so far! We appreciate them sincerely.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
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Those prototypes look very nice, but it seems like these are 4u-ish height and not wide enough to fit a standard rack, not 2U rackable as discussed earlier in this thread. Thats a bit of a bummer for me.
In terms of the capacity issues discussed earlier, I’d want a minimum of four 3.5 rust bays and 4 2.5 ssd/u.2 bays. Ideal would be 8 3.5 bays and 4 ssd bays.
Thanks for the open discussions!
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I would like to mirror the comment that I was hoping for rack mountable
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I would definitely buy an 8-bay HDD (extra points for hot swappable), rack mountable server. I’ve been considering the 15HL ever since it came out but I really don’t need that many drives. I run a do everything server on UnRaid. If the day ever comes where I need 15 drives I think I would switch over to running a dedicated NAS that is nothing but storage and second server that runs my docker containers. But I digress…
I want an 8-bay HDD, hot swappable, rack mounted server. But if the prototype images are to be believed, that is not what we’re going to get unfortunately.
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While those do look nice, I too would definitely be more in the market for something with 8 bays in the 2U rack mountable form factor. The Silverstone RM21-308 would be an example of this.
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I, too, am looking for a 2U rack mount form factor but I have to agree these look good. I’ve been wanting to set something up at my brother’s house as a remote backup location. I’ll be keeping an eye on these to see if they end up being a good first for that use case.
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Thanks for the awesome news! 
I like the far left prototype the most. Any idea what motherboard or processor will run it?
Also wondering how much it will cost for the base model?
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To echo much of the sentiment above, was expecting a 19” 2RU based chassis.
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I like the smallness of it. I don’t have a rack server and it would be need if it fit in an ikea kallax cube. The only concern I would have would be with the airflow if it’s sitting too far in to it, but I’m going to keep an eye on this.
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I would really like to see the 8 and also the 4 bay as rack mounted units or a way to rack mount them with out going to a shelf. I would ideally like to use the 4 bay in a small 3 unit cluster and the 8 in a 5 unit cluster for various workloads in my homelab production setup.
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Sounds like rack ears needs to be an option.
Don’t think the door design is very useful, these should be appliances that sit on a shelf.
Not sure if it’s best to have cutouts for single drives or groups of them, to allow for Icy Dock adapters.
What PSU format (size) is the target for these?
A recently released case that made be interesting to note is this one CS382
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I really like how the left one looks, as something I have long wanted is a generic 6/8-bay synology/qnap like desktop case. Easy to put on a shelf out of the way.
As someone else mentioned if they fit in a Kallax (33x33cm) cube that would be ideal.
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omg! just bought a case for a nas server I’m working on using this motherboard
I should cancel that order if 45drives is making an 8bay nas
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When do you need it? They’re still trying to figure out a case design, haven’t said anything about motherboard or computing specs, and haven’t said if they’ll offer just the chassis or only sell full builds. It could be a year before they release a product.
Judging by the comments, many people were hoping/thinking these would be HL versions of the C8 and/or MI4, or that there’d be both rackmount and desktop variants.
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