Drobo FS & VMWare

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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Hey all.

I am considering getting a Drobo FS. They are pricy, but the convenience of mix and match raid-like setups makes it wirth it for me.

I have a quick question though. If I do get the Drobo FS, my intent is to remove all traditional hard drives from my machine leaving only my 120GB SSD for a silent and cool case.

Since all files will be on the FS, this shouldn't be a problem, except for my ~32GB partition I had dedicated to my Windows 7 VMWare image, which I don't have the space for on my SSD.

Is the DroboFS via gigabit ethernet fast enough for infrequent VMware use, or would it be cripplingly slow?

Maybe I'll just buy one of those tiny 32gig SSD's for my VMware image, but I'd rather not spend the money if I don't have to.
 
wkearney99 said:
Ugh, a VM off the Drobo? Too slow, unless infrequent use means never.
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Heh. Agreed. Gig-E specifically is sufficient for home usage VM, but the Drobo has been known for slow performance; not sure if the FS corrects this.

I use an HP EX4xx WHS for my data. Costs as much as that Drobo FS but you get a full Windows environment in a small package (with its own list of drawbacks, mainly being a Windows environment). A NetApp is the simplest.

-Cool-
 
hah, thanks.

I wound up deciding agains the Drobo FS (the embedded NAS version) and instead got a 5 Port Drobo S which hooks up (via USB2 or eSATA) to my new linux server, whichhandles all the file serving.

I figured Gig E would be fast eough for VM serving as thats what a lot of corporate networks use for their iSCSI hookups when they virtualize their servers, but I was uncertain about how good the logic was in the FS to handle it.

The Drobo isn't bad thus far. eSATA transfer rates are ~69MB/s over the gig E network, but USB transfer rates are down at about 24MB/s.

Unfortunately my Linux server is having eSATA problems right now, so I am stuck in USB2 mode...
 
You failed to mention using linux to host it.

The words "we told you so" are ringing in the air...
 
The drobo boxes are built for "civilians". They have a pretty GUI, and work pretty well for most tasks, but running anything that really pushes performance (like running multiple VM's off a NAS) needs a performance oriented solution.
 
Zarathustra[H];1036160463 said:
What, you suggest running Windows as a server?!
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Um, no, not making that argument (so spare me the juvenile attempts at humor). More that drivers for interfacing USB and SATA on linux are often a pain in the ass, often unsolvably so. Combining dodgy drivers with the arguably dodgy Drobo setup seems like just asking for even more trouble. Yes, some folks can get it it to work. After figuring out the right combination of chipsets, drivers, module loading, chanting, voodoo and animal sacrifices to get the crap configured. Oh and then get bit in the ass when their beloved distro upgrades them out of functionality.

Windows certainly has its share of issues, but linux often has quite a few more.
 
I have not seen this driver problem on linux on 50+ linux machines over the last 5 to 7 years. However I use mostly gentoo and roll my own up to date kernels. Being an administrator for windows for 15 years and linux for 1/2 of that time on about the same # of machines for each operating system, I have had about the same success with storage drivers on each operating system. If anything linux support for storage drivers is slightly better than what I have experienced in windows (NT3.11 through Win7). And now with ahci it's getting pretty easy in linux since ahci works for a lot of sata controllers. Not sure about ahci on windows only that enabling this morning after a flash of my i7 win7 x64 HP desktop machine reset my cmos caused my system to be unbootable. I guess I do not have the ahci driver enabled in windows.. In linux switching the bios setting from raid to ahci would not have made the system unbootable.
 
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drescherjm said:
I have not seen this driver problem on linux on 50+ linux machines over the last 5 to 7 years. However I use mostly gentoo and roll my own up to date kernels. Being an administrator for windows for 15 years and linux for 1/2 of that time on about the same # of machines for each operating system, I have had about the same success with storage drivers on each operating system. If anything linux support for storage drivers is slightly better than what I have experienced in windows (NT3.11 through Win7). And now with ahci it's getting pretty easy in linux since ahci works for a lot of sata controllers. Not sure about ahci on windows only that enabling this morning after a flash of my i7 win7 x64 HP desktop machine reset my cmos caused my system to be unbootable. I guess I do not have the ahci driver enabled in windows.. In linux switching the bios setting from raid to ahci would not have made the system unbootable.
Click to expand...

Ahh, well the problem I have (which is actually being discussed here is that the AMD SB7x0 south bridge had some known errata related to its PMP implementation, but there was a work-around introduced to the kernel that I thought was supposed to deal with it. I would imagine that most of your servers are running on actual server hardware, and thus probably don't have an SB7x0 chipset in them, which is why you've likely not run into this before. I wanted a low powered, cool, and compact little server machine for my closet, so i picked up a Dell Zino HD for under $300. problem is that it has no expansion slots, so I can't just stick a 3rd party eSATA controller init :( I should have just built my own in retrospect, but hindsight is 20-20...

wkearney99 said:
Oh and then get bit in the ass when their beloved distro upgrades them out of functionality.
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This used to be a problem for me back when I ran Gentoo. Dependancies would constantly break, so I finally had enough with it and afer 3 years of gentoo as my primary OS I switched to Ubuntu, and haven't had a single update break a dependancy on me yet. (knock on wood)
 
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