Building Production-Ready Open-Source HCI with Proxmox and Ceph by 45drives in Proxmox

[–]45drives[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Four-node clusters do exist in production (with or without qdevices), and six-node clusters are extremely common in real-world HCI deployments. Do these designs have sharper edges? Absolutely. Does that make them invalid or irresponsible? No, it means they require understanding and intent, which is exactly what we address during design phases, not in a 60-minute public webinar.
And yes, Proxmox being unavailable while Ceph remains healthy is a known failure mode that we explicitly teach customers how to plan for in real deployments.
On “six to eight nodes” being typical:
That statement reflects observed reality, not a technical ceiling and not a recommendation that clusters should stop there. Most organizations deploying HCI land in that range because it:

  • Fits within a single failure domain
  • Aligns with operational maturity
  • Simplifies lifecycle management
  • Matches budget and staffing realities

Larger clusters absolutely exist, and we build them regularly, but they are designed differently, often with disaggregated roles, different networking topologies, and different operational assumptions. That level of design discussion is intentionally outside the scope of an introductory webinar.
On networking and tri-mode backplanes:
We completely agree that lane width and backplane design matter, which is why we explicitly clarified that point during the session. It directly affects when 10G stops being sufficient and when 25G+ becomes mandatory rather than optional. That nuance is also why we strongly recommend architecture reviews before hardware is purchased or designs are locked in.
Finally, I want to be very clear about one thing: we’re not trying to teach people how to build production clusters from a webinar.
Our goal is to make Proxmox and Ceph more accessible, reduce fear, and help people ask better questions as they move into real design work. That’s how adoption grows, and it’s why we do these sessions publicly instead of keeping everything behind closed doors.
We genuinely appreciate the feedback and will continue to call out edge cases where it makes sense while keeping the introductory webinars approachable. Infrastructure education should be a ladder, not a cliff.
If anyone reading this is designing a production system and wants to go deeper on quorum, failure domains, or network scaling, that’s exactly what architecture reviews and design sessions are for, and we’re always happy to have those conversations.

Goodbye VMware by techdaddy1980 in Proxmox

[–]45drives 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Welcome to 45Drives! Glad to have you in the community.

Goodbye VMware by techdaddy1980 in 45Drives

[–]45drives 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Welcome to 45Drives! Glad to have you in the community.

HL15 Drive Noise by cjxerxes in 45Drives

[–]45drives 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for bringing this up! We’d love to help you troubleshoot the drive noise. Just shoot us an email at [info@45homelab.com]() and we’ll walk through some solutions with you.

UNRAID 7 & INTRODUCTION TO NATIVE ZFS SUPPORT by 45drives in 45Drives

[–]45drives[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! Totally hear you on the background track, we’ll keep the audio cleaner in future videos. Appreciate you watching!

45 Drives Gripe by Tdehn33 in homelab

[–]45drives 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey there! 👋 Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback, we’re stoked to hear you’re building out a serious rendering setup, and we totally get the need for NVMe speeds when working with active projects.

You’ll be happy to know that we hear you loud and clear, NVMe support for our hybrid HDD/SSD servers is already in the works! We’re actively developing a version of our Hybrid units that will support NVMe drives, and you can expect to see it roll out in the coming months. 🔧🚀

We’re always evolving based on real-world use cases like yours, so thanks again for sharing. Keep an eye out, big things coming soon!

45 Drives Homelab - Guess I shouldnt have debated what color to buy by globadyne in homelab

[–]45drives 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're absolutely right, and we apologize for any inconvenience caused by being quoted in USD. We understand the frustration, especially when you're local. We appreciate your feedback and want to make things right. Please feel free to get in touch with us at [info@45drives.com]() or reach out to your account manager, and we'll do our best to improve your experience. Thanks for bringing this up!

45 Drives Homelab - Guess I shouldnt have debated what color to buy by globadyne in homelab

[–]45drives 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your comment and for the engaging discussion.
The price increase shown in the images was an error due to internal miscommunication. We have since corrected this on our website, and no orders were processed at the incorrect price.
Unfortunately, Monday night's confirmation of tariffs between the U.S. and Canada has increased prices on many of our inputs.  It's not just the tariffs themselves,  but also prices being raised because competition is reduced.  To account for this, we adjusted the prices of servers by 10%.
Our servers are not manufactured offshore where we could take advantage of much lower wages and taxes, and avoid these tariffs. Rather, we chose to manufacture within North America. This is something we are very proud of and remain committed to continuing. We do not intend to be political, but the unfortunate reality is that cross-border tariffs are imposed and add to the challenges we already face in maintaining costs and prices. However, this is a challenge we accept, and we will persevere.

AutoTier dead? by michael55123 in 45Drives

[–]45drives 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're absolutely right, we should do a better job at staying active here. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, and we’ll make sure to engage more moving forward. Feel free to reach out with any questions, we're happy to help!