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[Merged] DroboPro Announced - Business Class, Self-Managing 8-Drive Storage Server

I was already planning on getting a drobo next month, however I think i'm going to pinch some more pennies to get this. anyone know of the compatibility between it and the newest mac mini's (running Leopard server)?
I like the iSCSI idea, but i'm probably going to have to buy a gigabit switch in order to attach it. i've got more than enough saved up.
 
Drobo

I've been considering a Drobo for awhile now. I hope this helps drop the price of the older models.
 
detz said:
That is such a waste of money. You would be better off setting up raid 1 array or even just a software mirror of the drives. For the price of the Drobo alone you could have 6TB of mirrored storage.
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LOL, a raid 1 array or software mirror does not do anywhere NEAR what the drobo does, much less the drobo pro. Methinks you are speaking without much personal knowledge or experience.

It's expensive, but how many of you have put together raid-6 boxes? I have, and it's not cheap. You will find very few pre-made raid-6 systems, and most will either have just 5 drive bays (and require all drives to be same size) or will be a lot MORE expensive than this device.

Drobo is so sweet because you can mix and match drives, replace them with another larger one whenever you want, and the system works transparently. You certainly can create a unraid system for less, but it's much more configuration and not as user friendly.

Having the ability to lose 2 drives without losing data is a huge increase in data safety, and although this system is expensive, I definitely see myself getting one if the performance is acceptable. I wish it was about $899, but just like apple, you pay a premium for ease of use and design.
 
Correct, you can't use this like a typical NAS box. iSCSI is a separate and incompatible protocol to TCP/IP. It just happens to use Ethernet for cabling. Windows has built-in support for the iSCSI protocol and the Drobo comes with some software solution for the Mac. It's confusing initially for those unfamiliar with iSCSI.
 
easy to use

The ease of use and simplicity is what is attractive about the Drobo. The average person knows nothing about Raid and would never learn how to use it or understand it. Drobo emilinates all that and "just works" giving that average person the potential for a hugh amount of storage space.
 
Like the concept but the price is a bit high for the average home user.
Business users can justify it.
 
"Network" does not actually mean NAS. The ethernet jack connects to a computer (like the spare jack on a Mac Pro) to provide a faster type of connection -- it is not able to be networked without the $200 add-on DroboShare unit.

I would buy one myself, but I am still pissy that the rackmount ears are $200. Eventually DR will throw them in for free, and hopefully I can wait until then.
 
Grimace said:
"Network" does not actually mean NAS. The ethernet jack connects to a computer (like the spare jack on a Mac Pro) to provide a faster type of connection -- it is not able to be networked without the $200 add-on DroboShare unit.

I would buy one myself, but I am still pissy that the rackmount ears are $200. Eventually DR will throw them in for free, and hopefully I can wait until then.
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So iSCSI requires a dedicated cat 5 from the computer to the unit? If so my interest level just went way down. I thought it meant you could run it over a network (router/switch). I.e. I use my current cat5e going out from my mac pro and run an extra cable from the router in my basement to the new drobo pro.
 
twoodcc said:
so i still don't get the 16x16TB?
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The way I'm reading it, it's just an inexpensive HP EVA type array. Basically, the drives in the array itself, the total space on the device and the volumes itself you'll export over iSCSI (or USB 2 or FW) are all independant.

The 16x16 TB comment means you can create up to 16 volumes that are 16 TB in size. It's their software's limitation. Basically, someday, if you can fit 8 32 TB drives in there, and don't care at all about data protection, you'll be able to create 16 16 TB disks to map to servers using iSCSI.
 
KnightWRX said:
The way I'm reading it, it's just an inexpensive HP EVA type array. Basically, the drives in the array itself, the total space on the device and the volumes itself you'll export over iSCSI (or USB 2 or FW) are all independant.

The 16x16 TB comment means you can create up to 16 volumes that are 16 TB in size. It's their software's limitation. Basically, someday, if you can fit 8 32 TB drives in there, and don't care at all about data protection, you'll be able to create 16 16 TB disks to map to servers using iSCSI.
Click to expand...

oh ok. that makes sense, though it wouldn't be that hard to just say that
 
Very pricey since it's targeted at business customers. The dual redundancy is very nice, but I find that $200 upgrade offer for existing Drobo users to be a bit lacking.
 
KnightWRX said:
The way I'm reading it, it's just an inexpensive HP EVA type array. Basically, the drives in the array itself, the total space on the device and the volumes itself you'll export over iSCSI (or USB 2 or FW) are all independant.

The 16x16 TB comment means you can create up to 16 volumes that are 16 TB in size. It's their software's limitation. Basically, someday, if you can fit 8 32 TB drives in there, and don't care at all about data protection, you'll be able to create 16 16 TB disks to map to servers using iSCSI.
Click to expand...

Yes basically that is how it works right now, you can create one volume with the regular Drobo that is 16TB. So the Drobo Pro in theory would allow you to create 16 16TB volumes. What in the world would you need 256TB of space for I don't know. My current Drobo is sitting here at 2.2TB right now.

Now I do understand some of the fear of the Drobo failing that I keep hearing from people. But all HDD's can fail, so I keep a backup of all my data on multiple externals.

Going on I believe 8 months now with Drobo and the only problem I had was when I forgot to install the firmware 1.3.0 (I have automatic updates turned off). When I didn't install it Bay 4 went out. I emailed Drobo support, they told me to install the firmware and I was good to go. All in all it took about 30 minutes to get a response from them and install the firmware. Their customer support is outstanding imo.

The only thing that would make me hesitate with the Drobo Pro is the same issue I have with any new product. Wait and let the first few units ship out to reviewers make sure there are no firmware/hardware issues first, then order away.
 
Cynicalone said:
The only thing that would make me hesitate with the Drobo Pro is the same issue I have with any new product. Wait and let the first few units ship out to reviewers make sure there are no firmware/hardware issues first, then order away.
Click to expand...

One thing that would make me hesitate is the fact that it is just a storage array. You need either a DroboShare or a dedicated system to share out the contents of the disks to your multiple computers. So you're basically adding another box to get a complete storage solution.

The NAS market is getting pretty saturated with low cost options that all offer iSCSI, but also direct shares like SMB/NFS and pack a tons more features all out of the box. With Drobo, you have to get the storage array itself, then the Droboshare module, then you have to get DroboApps and install them yourself.

Sure you can mix and match disks and it'll work out as the RAID is done in software probably over slices and not the actual disks and logical volume management is tons superior to directly managing raids, at the price point and complexity of the solution, it needs to be simplified.
 
Well based on the fact that Drobo v2 can't saturate a USB 2.0 connection I'm going to say Meh until I see some hard numbers on this thing. iSCSI is nice, but if it's only going to write @ ~20Mbps like the current one, what good is it? Also having a potential 16 T's of storage is cool, but if it takes you almost 10 hours to transfer 500 Gigs... how useful is it really?

I shot an email to their sales department asking for some benchmark figures. If they reply with anything useful I'll post here, until then I suppose we're all just waiting to see what this thing can do. At the price point I don't expect a whole lot though.
 
Write speed definitely a weak spot in drobo use. I use mine only for backup, so it's not critical, but I've been very disappointed in the speeds of the drobo overall.
 
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