Money isn’t exactly “lush” so this is a pretty big deal breaker purchase.
I want to get an HL15, but I don’t want to be disappointed if in a few months they announce an HL24, or HL30, or any other larger capacity version.
Just wanted to see if there’s a heads up on any production ideas or guidelines before I order.
The last podcast they did talk about a ceph in a box idea which I found interesting. Worth waiting to hear about a roadmap in my case.
Hi @zelda64, We currently do not have any plans or anyone working on making a larger enclosure. our efforts right now are on the HL15 and getting it into production.
I’m sure in the future we will be making a HL30 based on our Q30 server but for now, there are no talks of this and no one working on this concept.
Awesome! Thanks for the information Hutch 
!
I’m curious if your stance on this has changed in the recent months with the outstanding feed back that the community and industry has given 45 Homelabs.
This is the only thing that is holding me up from a purchase. I currently have 20 Drives in my current rig and it is time for an upgrade. I’ve been eyeballing a 45Drives 30 bay for quite some time and was stoked to see the HL editions to come out.
Im not super thrilled at the idea to purchase 2 HL15s to accommodate my growing storage needs and would love to know if this is even on the “Idea board”
Thank you
I think there has been talk from 45Drives releasing smaller servers but I don’t think there is going to be a larger version of the HL15. If you think about it, why should they really? If you are storing that many drives and that much data you’re borderline in the enterprise category when it comes to hardware. And 45Drives already has enterprise solutions.
If I were 45Drives and I was to go down this route, I would just start selling some of my enterprise solutions (larger capacity servers) chassis as a standalone option with limited support.
I agree. I think that your rack space would be better used with a single Storinator. Then you also have room for future expanding for a while.
Just my thoughts.
I completely see your point however the price jump from a prebuilt (minus drives) HL15 to a low end Q30 is a sizable jump (over $4K). This is the biggest reason I’ve asked the question to see what they may have in store.
I mean an option could be a HL15 with a disk shelf…
You can contact 45Drives (not the HomeLab) and I think they will quote you a price for an empty Q30. You’d need to confirm with them what that includes as far as PSU(s), shipping, hardware, etc. (I think the enterprise pods are now built with redundant non-ATX PSUs?). Back in 2019 the cost was about $1200. I’m guessing now it’s maybe something like $1600 (?).
On the one hand it seems a lot for a box of folded metal. On the other hand, if your comparison is buying two empty HL15s with PSUs then you do have a comparable price target of $1800.
I’d be curious to know what the cost of a Q30 + Backplanes + PSU + SSF Cables would cost. (Maybe + HBA cards). Essentially sans the motherboard/cpu/ram.
I might poke 45 Drives to see if this is an option, and what the cost might be, compared to a HL15.
Yes, please feel free to reach out to our Enterprise division via our Contact Page if you’d like more information what is available. We will always do our best to accommodate your request.
Already did, and I have Bijil Kurian looking into it for me. I’m interested to know if there are any “Scratch/Dent” or even “Used” units for sale as a Chassis only. I’m not fussy, I just need something that can house ~30 odd drives. The idea here is it leaves me pretty future proof, since I can always just update the guts. The issue is finding something that can house this many drives, that doesn’t roar like a jet airplane, and is easily serviceable. The HL15 is awesome, but the limitation of only 15 bays doesn’t exactly entice “future proof” to me, as I can easily see myself outgrowing 15 bays. 30 on the other hand, that’ll take quite some time to fill.
At this rate, I’d give my left (unit) for an HL30. Exactly the same as the HL15, just with double the drive bays. For a marginal price increase…
If the HL15 is $799.99 for the chassis, I’d imagine/expect the HL30 to fall in around the $999.99 price point (ideally).
Give or take…
Hi @zelda64 Happy to hear you’re in touch with Bijil. To my knowledge, we don’t sell scratched, dented or used units. All of our units, homelab and enterprise alike, are sold new from our production facility.
That all being said, Bijil is definitely the man to help! He can guide you in the right direction regarding our product availability, cost, customization, etc.
This is where I ended up going with mine. Something of a “game time” call — I had three Lenovo SA120 on a storage shelf so I’ve set things up as a HL15 has a SA120 in a 1-to-1 pairing setup, which got me to 27 drives each, 81 drives for the set of three.
Adds 2U to each “building block” of my setup. Not a “Direct Wire” architecture entirely now. Seems to work just fine however. 
In hindsight what I should have done was asked 45Drives Sales for a quote on chassis only the 30-drive or 45-drive option from their enterprise lineup and built into those chassis. Might do that instead of HL15 #4 and #5 but really haven’t decided yet.
I’ve asked (including tagging them) before for that information (price list for chassis-only since barebones is on their product marketing website) to be posted here but don’t think 45Drives actioned it — maybe they aren’t willing to share that information outside a direct contact to Sales, who knows.
Why can’t you offer the chassis on the store. It would definitely increase your install base.
What chassis? As mentioned above, you can reach out to 45 Drives and request to buy whatever chassis you want. This is also including their enterprise solutions:
The 30 bay chassis mentioned above
I bought a Homelab case and its amazing and FAST!! I did run out of space already and didn’t want to spend the money on another one. My new purchase was this…
4U 45-Bay Storage Pod - Intel Xeon E5-1620V2 W/32GB DDR3, 3x PI49230-2
$525.00