45Drives and LINBIT Partner to Deliver Enterprise-Ready Open Storage Solutions

45Drives, the open-source storage leader known for making enterprise-grade infrastructure radically more transparent and reliable, has announced a strategic partnership with LINBIT, creators of DRBD and LINSTOR. This collaboration combines the strength of 45Drives' powerful open hardware and support model with LINBIT's world-renowned software-defined storage stack to deliver fully integrated, high-availability server solutions for today's most demanding environments.

The partnership brings highly available clustered storage into the hands of more businesses, institutions, and creators without the traditional cost and complexity barriers that come with closed, proprietary systems. Dr. Doug Milburn, President of 45Drives, emphasized the shared mission, stating that enterprise storage should be open, understandable, and built for the long haul. LINBIT has been advancing that same mission in the Linux software world for more than two decades, with their work on DRBD and LINSTOR setting the standard for open-source block-level replication and storage orchestration.

LINBIT, founded by Philipp Reisner who originally started DRBD development in 1999 as his master's thesis, has grown into one of the most trusted names in Linux-based storage. The company supports global customers with 24x7x365 support and a 1-hour emergency SLA. LINBIT's software is deployed by everyone from small businesses to global giants like Apple, IBM, and Amazon, and has been downloaded over 40 million times. Reisner expressed excitement about collaborating with 45Drives, noting that their approach to hardware and customer support is a perfect match for the kind of robust, production-grade deployments their software was built for.

This partnership brings LINBIT's cutting-edge technologies, particularly DRBD and LINSTOR, into 45Drives' hardware and support ecosystem. DRBD enables real-time block-level replication between nodes, forming the backbone of high-availability clusters, while LINSTOR automates storage provisioning in clustered environments, supporting bare metal, virtual machines, and Kubernetes-native deployments. For 45Drives customers, this means turnkey access to high-availability clustered storage architectures built on proven open-source tools, certified integration of LINBIT software with 45Drives hardware backed by expert support, and resilient data protection through synchronous replication and failover.

The collaboration also provides scalable deployments across bare metal, virtualized, or containerized environments and freedom from vendor lock-in with complete transparency into every layer of the stack. This partnership aligns with 45Drives' broader mission to make open hardware, open software, and open thinking the foundation of modern enterprise IT. While the market has long been dominated by closed systems that prioritize margin over transparency, 45Drives and LINBIT offer a powerful alternative, giving customers complete control of their infrastructure, long-term cost predictability, and access to deep technical expertise without the runaround.