WHS vs Drobo

Thanks haxxorboi.

My concerns are on a back burner for certain. I don't see any problems multi-streaming from a Drobo FS at this point.

No doubt, 70MB/s sounds fabulous on some other solutions. But I'm not seeing where I will ever be needing that for multiple streams of 1080 films like these where the demand is 2 to 5MB/s.

Even at 5MB/s, three or even four streams sounds possible with a read transfer rate of 33MB/s. I'm guessing that something in the Drobo will cluster long before I get to 33MB/s, but still 2 or 3 streams is more than I will ever need.

Thanks for the input everyone. Many knowledgeable people here and I appreciate being able to come here as a less technical person and ask a few questions and get even more answers than I was hoping for.
 
You do need to realize that 33MB figure is based on sequential read/writes. Once you start multiple streams it isn't just one sequential file, it's several, and that performance will degrade quickly. Whether or not your three or four streams will hit that degradation will depend on the drives and the Drobo itself.

If you're like me the Drobo will work fine for quite a while but once you start transferring 2 months of data over to it, maybe 500GB or so, that 33MB/s starts to become an annoyance. That being said I'm very impatient... so maybe that's a personal problem :)

Good luck
 
Thanks Haxx.

Well at the time of this two-stream test, I had 1.46TB on it already. I'm moving over another 1TB in the next day or so. At this point, I believe all that will be on this FS unit will be full films transferred in large batches. Hopefully that will help keep fragmentation of the files to little of anything.

I'll report back if I ever get a third or fourth machine doing XBMC for additional streams. Right now all I have is these two.

Thanks again.
 
Oh, one more thing I forgot. Drobo's have a nasty little annoyance in their design. Once they hit 90% filled space they will start to slow down quite a bit. That kinda makes sense when you have 3x500GB and it doesn't have much free space left, but once you get 8TB (6TB usable) in there and 10% means 600GB free space, that becomes arbitrary and ridiculous.

From what I'd read it wasn't the virtual RAID doing this, it was the Drobo artificially capping itself in the nuts for no apparent reason. They may have stripped that stupidity out with later versions but it got annoying very quickly to me.
 
Agreed.

I ran into something like this twice in the three years I had my Gen 2, but I didn't notice the slow down until it was almost pegged. Now, maybe I wasn't paying attention and it started sooner than that. But it did fill the drive at the end. When it happened the first time I just added another drive and it was gone. The second time I swapped out for two larger drives. I didn't think much of it once I noticed what had happened and added capacity.

I'm guessing your demands for performance are higher than mine. I just drag in a pile of movies and never really look back. Then drag in some more.
 
I think the Drobo is getting some harsh treatment here. I've recently bought into the Drobo line and I'll relate my experience.

I bought a DroboPro with 8x2TB WD Green drives a few months ago and have been using it via iSCSI attached to a Mac Mini. Even though it was expensive, I got a few things out of it that were going to be difficult in combination.

1. the rackable form factor.
2. the dead simple dual redundancy and disk swapping (as well as per drive lights for failure alerts).
3. Dead quiet noise level and excellent power consumption characteristics.

The performance of the DroboPro has been quite good over iSCSI ... I was ranging in the 30-50MB/sec range of a transfer over the network, and this was with a single port so the inbound/outbound aspect of the connection over iSCSI must have hurt performance quite a bit.

Afterwards, I bought a Drobo v2 used for additional storage. My experience with this is much the same ... obviously not rackable tho. The speed of the Drobo v2, however, borders on unacceptable ... it really depends on your use cases, but at best I get 22 MB/sec in a sequential transfer and more like 10MB/sec with multiple copies running. Also, with just four drives, the security of the data is a little more questionable ... but that's how it and many other 4 bay RAID's are designed, so can't really complain. I use it as short term mass storage.

It's true you can build a WHS server that does more ... but:

A. I am never going to run apps on a WHS server
B. I want to rack my storage
C. I want protected and on the fly expandability
D. I live in an apt so I don't want a jet engine in my rack

Drobo's are an excellent, if not exactly cheap, appliance. They serve a convenience and data protection niche, with the trade off being price (smaller consideration) and performance (bigger problem in my mind).
 
You are correct. Many around [H] tend to [H]ate on the Drobo, but that's only because its unreasonably expensive for what it is. You could build a device that does what you require for less than the cost of the Drobo, and you get the added benefit of being able to do more with it. Pretty much every pre-packaged WHS device can do all but B on your list, and you have additional options for data recovery if the device itself were to fail other than buying another device (not the case with Drobo).

Although you are correct that there are no pre-packaged WHS devices that are rack mountable with a sleek form factor, easy to understand lights, and a nearly completely hands-off operating system, most who require a system with 8 or more bays of drives are willing to setup a more robust system with RAID, ZFS, or something similar. Many choose to stick with WHS anyway, and they just have the previously listed perks scaled up with more drives.

Personally, the thing that kills the Drobo the most for me (other than cost) is the performance. We both agree that 10-22MB/s is way way too slow for a system holding multiple TB of of information, so why not spend the same cash for an equivalent WHS system with 60-80MB/s transfer speeds, and keep the additional benefits as previously stated? Don't get me wrong, I love the Drobo and its brain-dead simplicity, but I need a device that isnt hampered by low speeds and a high price tag.

-Cool-
 
My understanding is that WHS doesn't really do raid5 or 6 itself, only mirroring. As a media server, I want everything to be protected to a degree and can't just pick and choose folders to mirror ... Hence the dual redundancy.

The other thing is the the multibay enclosures i've seen are typically massive and noisy. The DroboPro is not much bigger than the space required to house the drives itself. I used to have some rack length servers and I couldn't move the 2u's on my own. I don't think it's possible to build something as small and low power. Only a dedicated appliance can get there.

I guess I have the luxury of being able to throw a little money at the problem. In other circumstances I might just build my own.

The other thing is that if you look carefully, used Drobos are available for 200 bucks. Bad performance is livable at that price, depending on what you're trying to do.
 
Isnt it true that if the Drobo system fails....as in "broken" that you cant just take your drives out and take your information off them?
 
borghost said:
However, I have a novice question. When I did my one file transfer test earlier (posted earlier) and got 29MB/s write and 33MB/s read, the measure was MB/s. When I look at the overlay in XBMC and see that it is Mb/s, what is the difference?

...

Could someone clarify this for me?

Thanks
Click to expand...

When doing file transfers, you're copying or moving an entire file from where it is at rest to another place where it will be at rest. Since you know how big the file is - it's all in one place - it's easier to express it in bytes because otherwise the numbers get too big.

Traditionally in networking however, data transmission has always been expressed in bits. This no doubt originates from the early days of serial data transmissions (one bit at a time). Additionally, when streaming data, you don't necessarily know how big the source file actually is (and for live streaming there is no file size).

So to summarise: streaming data is traditionally expressed in bits/sec, data at rest (or being copied wholesale from source to destination) is traditionally expressed in bytes.
 
harsaphes said:
Isnt it true that if the Drobo system fails....as in "broken" that you cant just take your drives out and take your information off them?
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ding ding ding... drobo's on-disk format is a closely guarded secret. but let's not 'hate' on drobo any more because of it, and let's avoid the phrase "Slowbo" henceforth. after all, spending $1500 on an empty chassis that gives you 5-25MB/s of transfer speed when loaded with 8 drives capable of 125MB/s each is totally reasonable, as is the recurring "support contract" fee drobo demands before they let you download any more software updates after a year (and if you let it lapse, its 3x the price), at which point the dashboard app will keep nagging you with popups until you pay up.

i might be able to live with being charged a fee for a major new software update when it includes value-added features, but they actually expect you to pay for *bugfixes*.

truth? every drobo box should include a free jar of vaseline. if you really think you need a form factor like drobo, FFS take a look at Synology, Buffalo or Netgear that have free tech and software updates support for life.

Another happy DroboPro customer: http://www.backupcentral.com/mr-bac...-didnt-care-cause-i-didnt-have-drobocare.html
And another: http://jan.rychter.com/enblog/2010/6/18/drobo-and-droboshare-a-review.html
 
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Odditory, aside from your not regarding anything posted previously in this thread (which already covers each subject you bring up and undermines some of what you just posted), if you were just a little bit honest and a little less exaggerative, you might be helping people get good information instead of deceiving people. You disrespect all of the contributors here when you act like they didn't already cover what you are spewing.

I think everyone acknowledges Drobo's proprietary format. You aren't breaking any news there.

I just transferred several GB from my 3 year old Drobo to my new FS and averaged 26.5MB/s. I repeated it three times. That's a Drobo to Drobo transfer (or Slowbo to Slowbo as you say in your unbiased way). According to your bright comments, I can't accomplish such speeds with just one Drobo in the mix, much less two. Funny how that is. And I don't remember spending $1500 either. And where is that 5MB/s transfer again? Hmmm.

Furthermore, this thread has already acknowledged that people who need more speed should go elsewhere. Too bad you didn't read that either. Or bother reading that I've already shown (now twice) that a Drobo can meet the needs of some, particularly those who wish to simply multi-stream HD films such as myself - all day long. But you don't care about any of that of course. You have a mission.

I've never needed a support contract to date because I've never had a problem with either of my Drobo units . . . ever. I called tech support once on a general question about the self healing process while I was watching it execute, but I've been problem free. That call, by the way, was 2 years after the warranty ran out. Tech support didn't hound me at all. Also, I get zero "nagging" popups about support contracts or anything else for that matter and my Dashboard has been great. I don't see any of what you describe.

I read your posted links. Think of any consumer technology and there will be many people who have had a bad experience. Anyone can go out and find someone who will bitch about something. Especially if they didn't get what they demanded or expected and especially about tech support.

The writers in your posted links had problems. That matters - especially to them. I don't blame them for being on a mission. In their experience, they have cause.

I can't reconcile much of what they say with my experiences though. And some of it is baffling to me. For example, the one guy is claiming that his Drobo is so loud it is louder than his 8-core Mac Pro. What in the world is the guy doing, operating inside a furnace? I have an 8-core Mac Pro full of drives as well and the same fans he has. I barely hear my Mac Pro if I lean under the desk and I can't say I have ever actually heard the fan on either of my Drobos turn on.

A Drobo won't meet everyone's needs, no doubt. But that has already been covered in this thread too (try reading the thread).

I decided to dedicate a minute to search and see if people out there were bitching about Synology, Buffalo or Netgear NAS and storage solutions. I only needed 40 seconds though. They're "never buying them again", "calling the Better Business Bureau", and "disgusted" with warranty support, RMA issues and technical support. Still others were happy.

I'll keep searching though. Found a new cuss word - that'll be handy.
 
drescherjm said:
I second that but windows only users tend to like WHS since it requires very little thought / understanding to set it up and integrate into a windows only network.
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Yeah, I *hate* things that are fairly simple and don't require learning a new operating system and pretty much serve my simple needs.
 
A Drobo won't meet everyone's needs, no doubt. But that has already been covered in this thread too (try reading the thread).
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I'm sure he's read the thread and so have I.

Your arguments in favor of a Drobo pale when compared to the advantages of my homebrew WHS system and the recurring "support contract" fee makes the Drobo a show stopper for me.

Everyone has their own criteria and different storage needs are to be expected but a Drobo ranks very low on my pre-built recommended storage list.

No big deal, just my opinion, and the Drobo line has been discussed before but I don't recall anyone defending it as vehemently as borghost.

He musta got the big jar of vasoline. :D
 
I doubt he has read the thread or he wouldn't bother repeating everyone and wasting his own time much less ours.

For myself, I haven't been making an argument for Drobo vs WHS other than to generally say WHS doesn't appeal to me for various reasons and the Drobo does. That's just for me and others in my shoes. It isn't my goal to get everyone to agree with my view. I just wanted be one person who spoke up about a good experience with Drobo, as well as ask a few questions.

I'm not against WHS anyway. It just isn't for me right now.

Additionally, I don't buy into these broad brush claims that the Drobo is for no one.

The vaseline obsession is funny, but a little weird though.
 
There's clearly an audience for a system that allows for workstation backups, network shared folders, easy expansion over time and a degree of redundancy against drive failure, at a reasonable price. WHS managed to do this, albeit not without issues.

Drobo fails in being quite dramatically overpriced while also being a dramatically poor performer (as observed by myself and many others). Their policy regarding closed forums and questionable support practices didn't help either. MS may be many things but at least they've had open forums for discussing their products. But Drobo is still missing a key component: easy workstation backups. WHS has it in spades with how easily your can do a bare metal restore to a workstation.

Meanwhile MS screws the pooch making noises about removing what a lot consider to be a valuable feature of WHS, data duplication (aka a form of redundancy against drive failures).

If Drobo wasn't so slow, wasn't so closed about support and wasn't so hideously over priced they'd really stand to gain a lot of potential customers. Perhaps that's why HP is going with them. Maybe the volume HP can sell will drive down the price and offer open support forums. Maybe their solution will improve performance. But will they still be lacking the workstation bare-metal backup/recovery?

Meanwhile the market has been MS's to lose. It does beg the question of just how much 'market' there's been for it anyway. They've gone a long way toward squandering whatever potential WHS might have had for growth. But while that growth might be attractive to a small company like Drobo, it may not be enough for MS to "justify" continuing WHS on it's own. This is a great flaw in how many MS technological efforts have been crippled. Too big a company, not enough motivation to make the small parts really shine.

I'm still holding out hope MS will get smarter about WHS between now and when the Vail beta ships. But if HP/Drobo comes up with a more compelling solution I may make the switch.
 
Meanwhile MS screws the pooch making noises about removing what a lot consider to be a valuable feature of WHS, data duplication (aka a form of redundancy against drive failures).
Click to expand...
I consider WHS as "put a fork in it" done.

They're a huge company, WHS was a small niche product, and with the economic downturn I see no reason for them to develop it any further.

Hewlett-Packard's MediaSmart boxes, the archetypal Windows Home Server systems, are being discontinued at the end of the year. HP has confirmed to Microsoft that it has no intention of developing products to support Windows Home Server 2, codenamed Vail.

Stick a fork in it...it's done.

But it's still better than a Drobo. :)
 
Old Hippie said:
I consider WHS as "put a fork in it" done.

They're a huge company, WHS was a small niche product, and with the economic downturn I see no reason for them to develop it any further.

Hewlett-Packard's MediaSmart boxes, the archetypal Windows Home Server systems, are being discontinued at the end of the year. HP has confirmed to Microsoft that it has no intention of developing products to support Windows Home Server 2, codenamed Vail.

Stick a fork in it...it's done.

But it's still better than a Drobo. :)
Click to expand...

I have a decent amount of hardware dedicated to storage... and I STILL have a big WHS VM because the backup software works really well, and it is pretty much a setup in a VM, add drives, and everything works solution. Not the best mind you, but it works better than a lot of pre-build NASes out there. While Vail may not be that exciting, WHS V1 can still sit in a VM and back up PCs all it wants :)
 
Old Hippie said:
I consider WHS as "put a fork in it" done.

They're a huge company, WHS was a small niche product, and with the economic downturn I see no reason for them to develop it any further.

Hewlett-Packard's MediaSmart boxes, the archetypal Windows Home Server systems, are being discontinued at the end of the year. HP has confirmed to Microsoft that it has no intention of developing products to support Windows Home Server 2, codenamed Vail.

Stick a fork in it...it's done.

But it's still better than a Drobo. :)
Click to expand...

I'd argue it's more complex than what you've stated. The problem seems to be MS wanted to roll up WHS in with other server OS offerings. And "someone" decided certain WHS-specific features weren't viable as being part of those other OS development efforts. MS has screwed up this way many times in the past.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "stick a fork in it". There are plenty of other OEMs offering WHS solutions, HP was one of many. That and there's still plenty of time for them to address the issues before v2 ships.

I'm not willing to count out the Drobo until after seeing what HP brings to market. If it's just the same thing they're shipping now, with the same prices and performance, then it's a non-starter.
 
WHS V1 can still sit in a VM and back up PCs all it wants
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I'll be using my current WHS OS for as long as it can go.....countless years. :)

I have no reason to believe Drobo will change and wasn't planning to purchase Vail because of the new storage format.

Vail is/was a non-starter for me and Drobos' in the same boat.
 
There is a (very small) chance that MS will partner with OEM's to deliver some sort of consumer solution for drive pooling in Vail. It won't be DE but maybe its RAID simplified or some such nonsense which is easy enough to configure and use and is not hardware based.

But from all the postings on WHS forums, Connect and blogs, its quite clear they intend SBS to be the main source of revenue, and the team is part of Server so they don't consider consumers important. They've said quite clearly that people with multi-TB collections are not their target market and will quite happily leave their loyal users out int he cold.

I also think there is no need to attack Drobo. There are plenty of other companies offering hugely overpriced, underperforming tech - like Apple! They made a device that performs as stated and fills a certain need. They are not making millions AFAIK and its certainly an off the shelf solution that works. Most people on [H] by definition are geeks and power users and will of course know of better alternatives (or be told about them). There is plenty of space in the market for all to live together!
 
The price isn't why I don't like Drobo..it's the bad performance and questionable reliability. Sitting next to my WHS EX495 is a Synology DS1010+ that I absolutely LOVE. I wish I had just bought the 1010 instead of the EX495 originally. Fast. Feature rich. Very nice setup.
 
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