New 8 bay Drobo Pro

If anyone finds a decent review, please post it. I'm quite interested. This actually can fit in the overhead compartments ;)
 
Ockie said:
If anyone finds a decent review, please post it. I'm quite interested. This actually can fit in the overhead compartments ;)
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+1, even better yet, Ockie, be the ginny pig and try out one of these bad boys, so I know if I want one or not:)
 
This thing would be a cool for like $500... for $1000 it needs to be white with a Mac logo.
 
Whats the margin on products like this? I know the HP MediaSmart servers when they came out were actually cheaper to buy than build something similar. How much does is the DroboPro hardware worth? Is the really high cost really what you pay for the software features?
 
MrCrispy said:
Whats the margin on products like this? I know the HP MediaSmart servers when they came out were actually cheaper to buy than build something similar. How much does is the DroboPro hardware worth? Is the really high cost really what you pay for the software features?
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Most likely you are paying for the software. But if you look at somewhat similar products such as a 16tb raid array from apple it's $15,000. Other 16tb raid arrays are well over $5000. So if one looks at it in terms of that the drobo is very cheap.
Though i'm still not paying $1300.
 
gjvrieze said:
+1, even better yet, Ockie, be the ginny pig and try out one of these bad boys, so I know if I want one or not:)
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Buy some of the crap I am selling and I'll buy this thing to be your guinea pig.
 
Bumping this thread to see if anyone found reviews or anything? Also, does anyone know the awnsers to this:

Does this unit support JBOD pooling rather than the unique raid it features? Not that it matters, just would like to know options.
And does anyone know if it supports straight up NAS functions without the iSCSI enabled? Can't find it anywhere on their FAQ or documents.
 
Hmm, we have to come up with a disk to disk backup system at the office and unfortunately a SAN is out of the question. I've been looking at this thinking it might not be that bad of an idea for us. Considering it is only backup data it might not be too bad... right?

The powers that be want me to look into iscsi storage, but it has to be an actual product... no going to Fry's to by a case/motherboard/storage etc. and piecing it together. They want a product with warranty and support.

Anyone have any other solutions I should be looking into? We need something with 10+ GB storage in a retail product... as cheap as possible since it is backup storage and not a production/critical system....
 
farscapesg1 said:
Hmm, we have to come up with a disk to disk backup system at the office and unfortunately a SAN is out of the question. I've been looking at this thinking it might not be that bad of an idea for us. Considering it is only backup data it might not be too bad... right?

The powers that be want me to look into iscsi storage, but it has to be an actual product... no going to Fry's to by a case/motherboard/storage etc. and piecing it together. They want a product with warranty and support.

Anyone have any other solutions I should be looking into? We need something with 10+ GB storage in a retail product... as cheap as possible since it is backup storage and not a production/critical system....
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This is a SAN and it's as cheap as you're going to get in this market for a fully supported unit.
 
Well the NetGear ReadyNAS Pro does iSCSI making it almost a SAN too. But it really isn't much cheaper.
 
For the price of a drobo, I'd rather have a freebsd box + zfs, a cheapass case and as many 1-1.5TB drives as I can fit in it.
 
Eww, iSCSI. I can't imagine why a home user would want that. VMware et al can use iSCSI target as disk storage, I guess, but I'd rather have local storage with OS caching for that kind of thing.

For bulk shared storage, iSCSI is a pain in the ass.
 
Robstar said:
For the price of a drobo, I'd rather have a freebsd box + zfs, a cheapass case and as many 1-1.5TB drives as I can fit in it.
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From a home user perspective (or even a small home business) I would completely agree. I would much rather load up a Norco 4020 with equipment for more storage...

However, in some instances a "roll your own" solution isn't possible (like my post above). Hands are sometimes tied when it comes to what can and can't be purchased in a business environment.

For our current solution, we need something for a backup solution (CommVault) to dump backup information on. The servers are doing all the processes and just need a storage area to drop it to, and they claim to support iSCSI storage so this seems like our best option at the moment. We just can't afford an EMC solution for this project (we are primarily a Dell shop).

Now, I am curious about their information on their iSCSI setup. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about iSCSI, but that is what one-the-job training is for right :) It shows that you can connect a single DroboPro to a server directly, or you can connect multiple to the same server by using a switch that isn't on the network... why? Do they really have to be seperate? We just set up a test VMWare setup with two Dell 2650's running Openfiler with iSCSI support and another 2650 running ESXi on our LAN and the server can see both iSCSI boxes. Why would the DroboPro's need to be outside the LAN?
 
They don't technically HAVE to be separate.. But do you really want general web traffic being switched on the same fabric as your data writes to the hard drive.. You are already limiting the drive subsystem bandwidth to Gigabit speeds (about 125mb/s) and having the switch deal with extra traffic (full broadcast traffic like DHCP requests go across all ports etc) is just not a good idea.

I wouldn't run iSCSI traffic over the general network if I could in any way afford not to.

Edit: Just think about it.. A computer boots up and requests an IP address and because of that your server has to wait for a bit before it can write to it's hard drive.. everyone connected to that server sees a small glitch or hesitation from the server etc etc

Edit2: At home I run OpenFiler, and even there I have it on a separate network, and two network cards in every computer that connected directly to the iSCSI. No other traffic goes on that switch, different IP scheme the works, I don't even assign a default gateway to the network cards on that switch since traffic on that network can't get anywhere else. (and it's not like a small gigabit switch with enough ports for those few computers is expensive)
 
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farscapesg1 said:
We just can't afford an EMC solution for this project (we are primarily a Dell shop).
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You should call Dell and talk to them about the new PS6000 series. We just got a demo of this product and it looks like it would fit your needs....not sure about price-range...
 
Shaggy3zx said:
You should call Dell and talk to them about the new PS6000 series. We just got a demo of this product and it looks like it would fit your needs....not sure about price-range...
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Actually, just call Dell period. They are more than willing to do some leg work for you if you give them at least a reasonable range of specs + what you are willing to pay.
 
Trepidati0n said:
Actually, just call Dell period. They are more than willing to do some leg work for you if you give them at least a reasonable range of specs + what you are willing to pay.
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Yep, with these higher end solutions they might try to make your budget work.
 
Well, looks like we will be getting one for the office and find out how well it works. Dell just couldn't get their prices low enough for our "proof-of-concept" scenerio we are setting up. Will probably only order 5 drives to start with and then upgrade/populate the other bays as we need them. If it ends up meeting our needs, we may expand to additional units for each facility to back up to. Still would have preferred to go with a Dell solution, but money is really tight right now....

Here is to hoping their product has matured significantly since the Drobo Beta I participated in.....

I'll let you all know how it goes :)
 
farscapesg1 said:
Well, looks like we will be getting one for the office and find out how well it works. Dell just couldn't get their prices low enough for our "proof-of-concept" scenerio we are setting up. Will probably only order 5 drives to start with and then upgrade/populate the other bays as we need them. If it ends up meeting our needs, we may expand to additional units for each facility to back up to. Still would have preferred to go with a Dell solution, but money is really tight right now....

Here is to hoping their product has matured significantly since the Drobo Beta I participated in.....

I'll let you all know how it goes :)
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Please do, a good review is needed!
 
Ockie, did you buy one? looking forward to your impressions and pics
 
EnderW said:
Ockie, did you buy one? looking forward to your impressions and pics
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Not yet. I didn't want to risk on it without seeing any review of any kind yet. Everything I've seen so far is just marketing bullshit. I don't want to drop 1.4k on something that might blow goats.

If it wasn't for the original drobo, I would have bought it, but knowing how the original one performed makes me a little reserved.
 
Ockie said:
Not yet. I didn't want to risk on it without seeing any review of any kind yet. Everything I've seen so far is just marketing bullshit. I don't want to drop 1.4k on something that might blow goats.

If it wasn't for the original drobo, I would have bought it, but knowing how the original one performed makes me a little reserved.
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I assume you meant the speed issues with the original. I have not heard of it crashing or loosing data, but 10-15MB/s does not do it for me either...
 
gjvrieze said:
I assume you meant the speed issues with the original. I have not heard of it crashing or loosing data, but 10-15MB/s does not do it for me either...
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that's only for the 1st gen drobo. The 2nd gen drobo was much faster.
 
Ockie said:
Well, I don't want this to be the situation with the 1st gen drobopro ;)
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I very doubt it is. The unit has a faster processor than even the Gen2 drobo and more connections.
You'll be more limited by drive speed.
 
Archer75 said:
I very doubt it is. The unit has a faster processor than even the Gen2 drobo and more connections.
You'll be more limited by drive speed.
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Show me a review or actual performance metrics and I'll buy one :)
 
rbennett5 said:
I'm building a new server and planning on using drobopro via iscsi so I can virtually do anything with it before deploying it. What kind of tests are you looking for?
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I want to know these things:

Can it run as a simple NAS or do you have to deploy iSCSI
Network performance via simple NAS and via iSCSI
How well the system works in terms of backups
Interface options


Basically I want to back my WHS servers up with this thing. I will most likely use iSCSI but it would be nice to see other functionality out of it. Really seeing a second opinion other than the marketing BS advertised would be settling to me.
 
The unit just arrived today. Still waiting on the hard drives (which were ordered before) so I can't benchmark anything yet.
 
Just recieved the hard drives... yet once again the people ordering didn't listen to the technical people....

The drives that were ordered and arrived are the WD 2.0 GB Green Power drives. Granted, this is only for disk-to-disk backup, but I'm not sure I want to keep these drives and use them...

Thoughts? Are the WD drives going to create a bottleneck in performance or will the bottleneck more likely be in the iSCSI connection between server and the storage????
 
Ockie said:
I want to know these things:

Can it run as a simple NAS or do you have to deploy iSCSI
Network performance via simple NAS and via iSCSI
How well the system works in terms of backups
Interface options


Basically I want to back my WHS servers up with this thing. I will most likely use iSCSI but it would be nice to see other functionality out of it. Really seeing a second opinion other than the marketing BS advertised would be settling to me.
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I've had a drobopro for a few days now + 4 1.5tb seagates. To answer your first question, you cannot run the dbpro as a simple NAS. I too was disappointed by this but the FAQ at DRI's site even states this fact. You'll need to attach it to a host computer which in turn handles the file sharing over the network.

DRI does not have a working version of the "Dashboard" application that runs under Win 7 RC1 (build 7100) or Linux (I tested with Ubuntu Jaunty). The dashboard basically facilitates the setup + maintenance of your dbpro and is supposed to automatically recognize the dbpro when it's connected to the system, either via usb2, fw, or iscsi. For Windows 7, you will have to run the Microsoft iScsi Initator service and manually add the iscsi target in there for the dbpro to showup. There is a 3rd party Linux dashboard utility that I'm currently wrestling with (drobo-utils) that *should* work for Linux but I'm still fruitless.

As for speed, I haven't yet performed any formal testing but it does seem pretty quick. I'll try it out soon and I'll post my results.

What did you mean by backups? If you're curious, the dbpro can handle up to 2 simultaneous drive failures. Again, I haven't tested this either.

Interface options are usb2, fw, and iscsi where the latter provides the best performance.
 
I too would like to see some real world numbers on the throughput. I've only found one article from someone and they stated their read/write speeds averaged 83.2MB/s and 81.3MB/s.
If these numbers hold true, how does this compare to other entry level ISCSI Sans? Would this be fast enough to support data shares on a small domain (say 30 users) instead of having them directly on the Raid-5 solution built in the server itself?
 
playarules said:
I too would like to see some real world numbers on the throughput. I've only found one article from someone and they stated their read/write speeds averaged 83.2MB/s and 81.3MB/s.
If these numbers hold true, how does this compare to other entry level ISCSI Sans? Would this be fast enough to support data shares on a small domain (say 30 users) instead of having them directly on the Raid-5 solution built in the server itself?
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If those numbers holds true, then it should be pretty competitive to a cheap iscsi solution, but keep in mind, it's not only a ton cheaper... but you are going to be limited by your network.
 
lemonizer said:
I've had a drobopro for a few days now + 4 1.5tb seagates. To answer your first question, you cannot run the dbpro as a simple NAS. I too was disappointed by this but the FAQ at DRI's site even states this fact. You'll need to attach it to a host computer which in turn handles the file sharing over the network.

DRI does not have a working version of the "Dashboard" application that runs under Win 7 RC1 (build 7100) or Linux (I tested with Ubuntu Jaunty). The dashboard basically facilitates the setup + maintenance of your dbpro and is supposed to automatically recognize the dbpro when it's connected to the system, either via usb2, fw, or iscsi. For Windows 7, you will have to run the Microsoft iScsi Initator service and manually add the iscsi target in there for the dbpro to showup. There is a 3rd party Linux dashboard utility that I'm currently wrestling with (drobo-utils) that *should* work for Linux but I'm still fruitless.

As for speed, I haven't yet performed any formal testing but it does seem pretty quick. I'll try it out soon and I'll post my results.

What did you mean by backups? If you're curious, the dbpro can handle up to 2 simultaneous drive failures. Again, I haven't tested this either.

Interface options are usb2, fw, and iscsi where the latter provides the best performance.
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Thanks for the update. That's kinda unfortunate about the simple sharing, I was hoping to be able to have a cheap share box thats tiny like that but also have the functionality of iscsi. Oh well, not a big deal, just a hope I have.

How is it's performance via firewire? If you can post performance metrics via all interfaces that would be great.

Also, being lazy right now, does it support straight up pooling (true JBOD) or do you have to use it's raid functionality?
 
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