45Drives has been a cloud-scale staple for some time, delivering some of the first purpose-built storage servers for service providers. Over time the company has added many more servers, most recently an exciting 15-bay rig designed specifically for the homelab enthusiast.
45Drives has been a cloud-scale staple for some time, delivering some of the first purpose-built storage servers for service providers. Over time the company has added many more servers, most recently an exciting 15-bay rig designed specifically for the homelab enthusiast.
Doug Milburn joins the podcast to discuss the origins of 45Drives and the considerations that went into the HL15. Doug also discusses some of the roadmap for the homelab line, which should get enthusiasts bubbling in the event the HL15 isn’t your cup of tea.
Doug describes himself as a “geek by birth.” He likes everything electronic, computer, mechanical, whatever, studying physics for a couple of degrees, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and picking up everything else along the way.
We are just starting our test and review of the HL15, to get up to speed on our progress check out our unboxing and setup video here.
The podcast was done live on Discord – join Discord to keep up to date with all the latest from the SR Lab!
We are transcribing the podcast here, so you can skip to sections that might be more interesting to our listeners. However, if you have time, catch the podcast in its entirety. You won’t be disappointed. The YT video in embedded below for those who prefer the visuals.
00:00 Introduction
- Personal background
- Life in Nova Scotia
- Education background
- Building metal things
- Challenges doing research
- Building enclosures
05:00 Integrating everything
- Materials, research, building, manufacturing equipment, etc
- Created 3D CAD software – Protocase Designer
- Backblaze cold storage
- Met with Netflix to build computers
- Drives operating in parallel
- incredible data transfer rates
- Multiplexing slows things down
- Tripping over drivers
10:00 Get up to speed on the HL15
- Check out our YouTube Video
- Brian talks about building the server
- Jordan and Kevin get top billing
- Kevin and Jordan try to explain the reasoning
- Brian closes his eyes and pretends not to listen
- Storage demands were not as significant as today
- Data sets were smaller 15 years ago
- AI is driving these massive data sets
- What’s different for 45Drives today
- Focus
- Customers drive 45Drives business direction
15:00 Working with government agencies
- Federal government creates lots of data
- everything from law enforcement to scientific agencies to military
- University research
- Univ of California San Diego
- Wildfire project
- Utilizing video cameras for fire observation
- Using AI creating massive data sets
- Lots of videos to process
- Univ of California San Diego
- Municipalities
- Video Everywhere
- Forensic data
- Body cams
- Car dash cams
- Creating the Server Zoo
- Data is here, there, everywhere
- Adopting clusters
- What’s interesting to 45Drives
20:00 Cold storage
- Enterprises like the reliability that comes from 45Drives
- Moving to flash
- Flash 32 drive unit
- SATA and SAS
- First tri-mode unit
- Building a machine
- Hot-swap drives
- 16 million IOPs
- 32 Gb/s
- Lab guys love the HL15
- Impressive build
25:00 Delivering a clean build to customers
- Machines cut the die, but people inspect and clean up
- Why 45Drives build safe and solid chassis
- Sharing anecdotes
30:00 Building affordable home lab equipment
- Affordability range
- Get it down to $2K
- Business is brisk
- Sold in excess of 250 units
- Discord question: Why build a white server instead of the traditional black?
- Came from feedback from many resources
- Discord question: does adding color and graphics add to the cost?
35:00 Built in North America
- 45Drives is a believer in fair wages
- Employees are in with variable pay
- Build with quality
- Let customers add to it easily
- Cost-effective customization
- Add whatever drives you want
- Use the software you need
40:00 People have their own idea of what they want
- 45Drives fills 45 percent full builds
- 55 percent are built with other options
45:00 You can’t please all the people all the time
- People should buy what they can afford
- Just getting started, buy from eBay
- Get a used server like a PowerEdge
- build it so you can use it
- the HL15 is a premium server
- Is there a thin client on the way?
50:00 Looking at the hardware build design
- Keeping the price point
- Top loading caddy
- relieving repetitive stress injury
- Do you really need 240 screws?
- Reducing vibration on hard drives
- Flash vs HDD
- The right tool for the job
- Cost per terabyte
55:00 Question from Discord audience
- How do 45Drives characterize support and warrant for the HL15
- Low defect rate
- Ship it back, or they send the part via FedEx on 45Drive’s nickel
60:00. Things you should and shouldn’t try
- Don’t try what we did in the lab
- Want another podcast with 45Drives?
63:00 Wrapup
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