I would like the flexibility on having a SAS/SATA Pool and an NVME Pool but with the NVME pool connected directly to MotherBoard using MCIO connections directly and not from an HBA.
For SAS/SATA pool support both HDDs and SSDs.
@Vikram-45HomeLab I didn’t vote for the tri-mode backplane, but I figured I’d put out there I’m probably enough of an enthusiast to buy one still.
I do think timing is a factor here. I assume that internally you have a target of how new (or conversely how old) of enterprise gear or features you want to offer. NVMe in the form of U.2 or U.3 is growing, but I see it being a few years out still before going “mainstream” in HomeLab. You’ll want to offer it at some point in the future but, in my opinion, hybrid seems to be the way to go for the nearer term future.
My concern with the Tri-Mode Backplane, the way the options were presented, was the " *(even if it costs more!)", giving the impression that it would be the baseline offering, increasing the price of entry for an already expensive chassis, not some sort of option. Although I appreciate the opportunity for input, and trying to avoid a long rant, I think this is one of those surveys that misses some proper feedback about how the product could/should be developed.
As I see it:
There is going to continue to be a core group of prospective customers that are cost conscious and mostly interested in just a large pool of spinning rust, they don’t need or want tri-mode at a higher cost.
There are people who would like to add some 2.5" (7 or 15mm) SSDs, but aren’t enamored with the 3D-printable bracket (although it’s cool that was thought about). These people would be better served by a hybrid combo like I think is/was offered on the AV15 for a while
Although U.2/U.3 has the benefit for people who are labbing for work, consumer 2.5" SATA SSDs still provide a more cost conscious option for the segment who are looking for faster random disk cache for media serving and light random IOPS workloads. The industry is moving on from the 2.5 inch form factor and SAS for flash storage though. Great for speed, but it requires PCIe lanes that a lot of builds aren’t going to have.
Although more of an investment for the buyer, a more forward looking approach would probably be the combined HDD/NVME configuration
although I definitely think it needs to be an option, not the single configuration.
All of those still miss another opportunity, which is people who want to add long GPUs but don’t want a 5U 24" Beast. I’d like to see a version developed that has only 8 or 9 3.5" drive bays (or some configuration in the same space including some SSD/NVME) but leaves the left side of the chassis open for long GPUs. This would be an AI type configuration, allowing for a couple of AMD Radeon Pro W7900s or something.
One of the nice things about the 45Drives cases is their relative simplicity, so I’m not looking for a lot of little fiddly parts and configuration options, but if we are talking about the backplane direction, I think there are some better alternatives to discuss than just “$$$tri-mode or hybrid?”
I completely agree on this point. I doubt it’ll make sense for 45HomeLab to offer to different back planes in the same product line. It’ll also take time for cost to come down which I prefer in order to include it one day while keeping a lower entry point for people.
i would pay a premium for a EATX HL30 version, as for drive back-plane configuration, sell them separate on the store and let people build the lab they want.
Just curious, as much as I like the Q30, what is the use case for a machine with both EATX and 30 drive bays? With 100 Gb+ networking available now at not unreasonable pricing, wouldn’t you rather have a compute node separate from a storage node? You also have to get a lot of airflow through the drives to cool a high TDP CPU(s) you’re going to put on an EATX board.
