This is a very exciting time for us as our customers have started receiving their HL15s.
We want to improve your experience on our website and storefront. Our goal is to create a more convenient buying experience for you by expanding the offerings in our store. This way you have a one stop shop for everything you need in your homelab, including drive, components and accessories.
We have created an initial list of items which will be available on the shop, but we want to hear from you about what other items you would like to see available for purchase on the 45HomeLab store.
Here is what our team came up with initially and we will add more in future:
HBA
LSI 9600-16i
Hard Drive and M.2
Enterprise Seagate & Toshiba HDDs
Enterprise Micron SATA SSDs
Micron M.2 NVMe Drives
Rails
Data cables
Network card
10gbe
25gbe
40gbe
100gbe
Transceivers for Network Cards
PCIE NVME Riser card
2x M.2 Slots
4x M.2 Slots
RAM
8GB,16GB,32GB, 64GB
Caddies
15mm
7mm
Fan Shroud
We would really appreciate your input on the list and anything else you would want to see available. We are happy to look into anything we missed if you are interested in us offering it from the 45HomeLab store.
Pretty solid list so far, the most glaring missing items seem to be the spare parts. For a HL market and decades of chassis life I think backplanes, power Distribuition boards, and other similar component should be available for sale.
Here’s what I would recommend to be added:
More economic/budget HBAs
9600-16i is $1k+
SAS Expanders
Since HBAs like the 9300 are EOL and 9600 is so pricy, an expander seems like a great middle ground for currently supported hardware.
we are working towards to having NETGEAR switches available in the store but are looking for some insight into what you guys would want. Specifically In terms of:
Port count
Switch Speed
Unmanaged, Plus, Smart, Fully Managed
Once we can get a good idea on what the demand is, we’ll work to make those available to buy from the store!
FWIW if I were you guys I wouldn’t add switches to the store. That being said, if I was shopping for a switch right now I would buy another TRENDnet TEG-3102WS or a 10 gig version of that. I am not running server cpu/motherboards so I don’t have enough PCIe lanes to run anything faster so I’m making do with 2.5 gig.
Note that some of the Netgear switches that are “managed” don’t support setting a management vlan which in my opinion makes the management feature useless. For example see the Netgear GS110EMX. So if you do sell any Netgear switches that are managed, make sure they don’t miss any key features like that.
Spare hardware could be purchased from Mcmaster-carr. They’ve actually linked their website in the printables.com files they’ve uploaded for SSD screws.
This is probably a long shot but what I’d really like to see is a different motherboard/CPU option meant for Proxmox hyper converged instead of a dedicated storage server. I’ve been eyeing the new Epyc 8224P in particular but it doesn’t seem like the motherboards are easily available yet.
Well even to piggy back on that, just even a different CPU models and coolers that are compatible with the supplied motherboard like a bronze, silver, gold, platinum options.
movies library, nb. of movies, concurrent viewers (inside the home, remote)
neuroscience workloads (my use-case), and nb. patients that can be processed in CPU-years estimates
nb. of 4K videos concurrently editable directly over the LAN
other meaningful high-level abstractions that make sense to everyday users
I can’t be bothered with SAS to SATA controller types, backplanes, etc. (I’m exaggerating to illustrate the point, I actually love learning from this community!)
Please keep the store simple, so I can share it with other neurscientists (in my case) and that they would understand what they’re about to buy. They want their 45iPod!
The difficult part might be to do this in such a way to not disturb the sensibilities of the true homelabber, so please, don’t hide any of the details either —for all of us who love getting into the weeds of things.
I’d love to be able to buy a full build HL15 but with a Xeon 4130 (or equivalent) and more RAM for my needs. So really more customization options when building a HL15.
I’d just offer the HL15, cables, rails and nothing else really. Everything people ask for you can get from just about any hardware supplier online. The only way this would make sense if you could offer drives for a much lower price for example.
Kinda surprised to see so many people on the forums asking very basic questions about this thing. Like “can it run VMs”… dude it’s just a computer, do whatever you want.
It seems those people would be best suited getting a QNAP or a Synology.
Actually, that’s an interesting idea: why not do a side-by-side comparison on the storefront with the HL15 vs. these other solutions? Add affiliate links while you’re at it to “monetize” the non HL15 believers
I may be going against the grain on this one, but I feel like diversifying your shop to meet so many different and variable needs might endanger your business model. Thank you for choosing to build customizable and flexible build quality cases. Case options in the homelab definitely needed a new player. I am excited to see what else comes from 45Drives down the road.
For instance, regarding the HBA LSI 9600-16i. Yes, it’s an industry standard, but it’s also a $1000 card with PCIe 4.0, yet the full build is only PCIe 3.0. I understand that the older cards are not available at a retail level anymore. In my case, I would go used HBA off Ebay or from my hardware pile. I think if someone was willing to spend $1000 for a newer PCIe 4.0 card, they would also want a different motherboard like the Supermicro X12 series.
I feel like network cards, hard drives, rails and cables are good choices as they will tend to hold their value and may not be such a drain on your cash outlay for inventory. I would imagine carrying a full line of either brand processors would be unmanageable and unprofitable. Unless you can get terms that allow you to dropship from the suppliers.
Regarding switches, again I feel there is too much variety (managed vs unmanaged, Level 2 vs Level 3, Sfp+ vs RJ45 and brand preferences) to make a 45Drives store option an effective solution that cannot be met elsewhere. I get the idea of wanting to offer your customers a single point shop, but not sure the variety of homelabbers and their individual requirements can be scaled effectively.
In general, finding the hardware I want to acquire hasn’t been overly problematic. I am unsure how 45Drives entry into this retail space would improve this. I wouldn’t expect prices to be cheaper than elsewhere online. As a homelabber, price is a consideration. (although I see some impressive build scenarios posted here @SpringerSpaniel ).
Anyways, It seems like your off to a great start and I wish 45Drives success in this area. I will support you where I can.
What i would really like to see is the lead time on an order.
I’ve just put my order in after getting spousal approval today but not knowing how many months i will be waiting is a negative.
In my case I have just ordered the bare case.
Not much there for burn in testing.
Welcome to the community, I am Vikram Solanki, your e-commerce coordinator for 45HomeLab.
Congratulations on getting spousal approval to buy an HL15
I would be happy to provide you with more information on your order. Please email me at info@45homelab.com with your order details, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
—for all of us who love getting into the weeds of things.
