Your Server. Your Data. No Compromises.

Most people don't get up one morning and decide they want to own a server.

It usually starts with a problem. A photographer running out of space. A family trying to keep decades of photos somewhere safer than a social media account. A small business that needs shared storage but doesn't want to hand everything to a cloud provider. Or someone who's been running servers for years and just wants something that works out of the box for once.

And behind all of those problems is the same realization: depending entirely on cloud services means depending entirely on someone else's decisions about what your data costs and what happens to it. Cloud storage fees keep going up. Providers change their terms. Services get shut down or sold. And at some point, everyone storing files in someone else's cloud faces the same truth: either you keep paying forever, or you do a massive migration to get your own data back.

This partnership exists to make the alternative easier.
 

One Philosophy, Two Communities

Unraid and 45HomeLab come from different sides of the same idea. Both believe that people who own hardware should actually own it, not lease it, not rent access to it, and not get locked into one vendor's way of doing things.

Lime Technology began building Unraid in 2005 as a better way to store media without every drive spinning all the time. That idea grew into a full operating system that now runs containers, virtual machines, applications, and storage from a single platform. Today, hundreds of thousands of people around the world run everything from personal media servers to small business infrastructure on Unraid.

45HomeLab comes from the team behind Protocase and 45Drives, companies that have spent decades designing storage systems for research labs, governments, and enterprises. In 2023, 45Drives launched 45HomeLab to bring that same engineering to people who want serious, well-built hardware for their home or office without paying enterprise prices.

Both companies started in the early 2000s with the same instinct: people deserve better tools than what the legacy vendors were offering. One grew from software engineered to run on nearly any combination of hardware you throw at it. The other from hardware engineered to run alongside the open source ecosystem. After more than two decades building that expertise separately, we've brought it together.

Introducing the 45HomeLab >< Unraid Signature Series

For years, the Unraid and 45HomeLab communities overlapped naturally. People paired the hardware with the software because it was a good fit. But that usually meant figuring things out on your own: which components worked best, what firmware versions played nicely together, how to get the most out of the combination.

This partnership changes that.

Launching throughout 2026, the 45HomeLab >< Unraid Signature Series is the first lineup of servers created through this collaboration. Components have been selected and tested specifically for the workloads Unraid users care about most: media streaming, file storage, containers, virtual machines, home automation, game servers, security cameras, local AI, and more.

Think of it this way: the photographer who ran out of space shouldn't have to spend weeks researching hardware compatibility. They should be able to unbox a server, turn it on, and start organizing 20 years of photos that afternoon. That's the bar we're building to.

Nothing is locked down. Every component (drives, memory, cooling, networking) can be replaced, upgraded, or swapped out. No proprietary parts. The chassis is heavy-gauge steel with an all-screw design, so the entire server can be opened, modified, and upgraded with standard tools. Hardware and software designed to work together from the start, so that when it arrives at your door, it just works. And everything about it is still completely yours to adapt however you want.

One Server, Everything You Need

One of the defining ideas behind Unraid has always been consolidation—running storage, applications, media, automation, and virtual machines from a single server instead of separate machines.

The Signature Series was built with that in mind. Start with file storage and a media server. Add containers as you explore new tools. Spin up virtual machines for development or a full desktop. Host game servers, automate your home, run security cameras, or experiment with local AI.

One server. As many jobs as you can throw at it.
 

Built to Last, Backed by Companies That Aren't Going Anywhere

Lime Technology has been building and supporting Unraid for over twenty years. Protocase and 45Drives have spent more than two decades designing and manufacturing open source storage hardware. That matters because servers are long-term investments. People expect them to run reliably for years, and they want to know the companies behind them will still be there when they need support.

Every server within the 45HomeLab >< Unraid Signature Series was designed with that mindset. Expand storage as you grow. Add applications as your needs evolve. Replace or upgrade components as technology moves forward. The system adapts to you, not the other way around.

A Real Answer

We think there should be a straightforward path to owning your data. A server that arrives ready to run, with software that lets you do almost anything with it, built by people who've spent their careers making exactly this kind of thing.

Powerful software. Solid hardware. Tested together. Every piece of it yours.