The skinny on the Drobo storage array device
by Ryan Block 
posted Apr 10th 2007 at 5:21PM
- The device will come drive-free, and cost $700. It will launch in the summer.
- It does not use RAID of any kind. Instead, it uses pooled virtualized storage.
- Unlike RAID 5, which requires 3+ drives of the same size, users can add disparate SATA (I or II) drives of any size.
- The storage pooling impact is estimated as the size of the largest drive. So if your largest drive is 500GB, that will be the maximum amount of space lost from the storage pool for redundancy. With four 1TB drives you would get 3TB addressable storage, and ~2.7TB after formatting.
- The device can address an infinite amount of storage, limited only by file systems and drive capacities.
- All drives are hot swappable; new drives are instantaneously available.
- The device is block-aware and makes use of a "virtual hot spare", meaning that if a drive is pulled or lost and there's enough free space on the drives, data will be double-copied and made redundant again.
- Data has corruption protection as well; if data is corrupt on one drive, the device will intelligently find another copy of the data which is not corrupt.
- For lack of necessity, the device does not support FireWire 400 / 800 or eSATA; its internal data speeds are not fast enough that those interfaces would benefit performance.
- The device will only format NTFS and HFS (PC and Mac); it may be updated to support other file systems.
- It features NVRAM and a battery backup so even non-journaled file systems will be protected against corruption during loss of power.
- It will monitor drive health by its own system of metrics, and pre-emptively predict drive failures.
- Data Robotics plans to launch higher capacity Drobos with more drive bays.
- There will also be an open API for interfacing with the Drobo.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave @ Apr 10th 2007 5:35PM
Eh. I don't get it. I'm using a 4-drive SATA NAS in RAID 5 configuration--and that's enough redundancy for me. It's fast, efficient, cheap, and I can lose an entire drive without worrying about losing my data. I'm not sure what the hoopla is about with this thing. It sounds like (expensive) overkill.
Ryan Block @ Apr 10th 2007 5:54PM
I also have a RAID 5 array, but this offers some distinct advantages. To add space you don't have to upgrade the entire array. What's more, being block-aware, if a drive fails and it has the space, it will automagically rebuild without having a (hot) spare or replacement drive.
Steve @ Apr 10th 2007 5:45PM
This is crazy! $700 for an empty HD enclosure. You could build a PC with 12 drives for a cheaper price.
Correct me if I am wrong, but only USB, not Firewire or eSATA, that's just crazy.
anonymous @ Apr 10th 2007 5:48PM
hmmm,
useless, slow and proprietary. all things people need in a new age device.
I'll pass.
Captain Obvious @ Apr 10th 2007 5:48PM
Sounds to me like it is very similar to the Microsoft Home Server in how it deals with drive space.
Nicholas @ Apr 10th 2007 5:59PM
Why did they use a power wart? I'm really tired of having these things hanging all over the place... Outside of that, the device is pretty appealing for backups, perhaps when my Lacie array gives up the ghost.
FrankTheCrank @ Apr 10th 2007 6:08PM
Micro$oft school of pricing.
These guys must have went to the same school as the XBOX 360 team. To be charging this much for practically nothing is insane.
Just like charging $179 for 120GB laptop drive. INSANE!!!!
August @ Apr 10th 2007 6:28PM
Sigh...another savant incorrectly spelling "Microsoft".
Yeah, I do suppose $400 for the best online gaming and media platform qualifies as "practically nothing".
Ryan @ Apr 10th 2007 6:09PM
I'm looking for the need this device is filling; I guess it has something to do with the instant hot swap.
I guess at some point (ripping HD DVDs?) we'll need a way to physically archive hard drive storage.
But outside of that, I can't see a reason to choose this solution at this time...
nial @ Apr 10th 2007 6:36PM
"The storage pooling impact is estimated as the size of the largest drive. So if your largest drive is 500GB, that will be the maximum amount of space lost from the storage pool for redundancy. With four 1TB drives you would get 3TB addressable storage, and ~2.7TB after formatting."
How is that possible? To have redundancy, you need to have a copy. Without compression, 3TB does not fit in 1TB.
TheChaz @ Apr 10th 2007 6:29PM
Captain Obvious is right - this is very like the way Windows Home Server works. I'm inclined to wait for that, given that you won't be limited to 4 drives and you can build your own with spare hardware.
Peter @ Apr 10th 2007 9:36PM
TheChaz & Captain Obvious - Yes, the storage pool works similarly to this in Windows Home Server. But WHS itself has some serious shortcomings. My main problem with it is that the backup data format is proprietary, and in the current beta, if you need to rebuild or reinstall the OS, you lose all your system backups. In most, but not all cases, shared folder data is preserved, but not backups. (Just something to be aware of)
james smith @ Apr 10th 2007 6:35PM
it's chic to be geek, the price they are asking is a bit high, but i'm sure they will do well. chic-geek don't get their hands dirty...
Marc W. @ Apr 10th 2007 6:52PM
personally, make it capable of e-sata speeds and I'll take one
marko mandaric @ Apr 10th 2007 6:38PM
Some of the notable features include: the ability to auto-repair corrupted data, the ability to detect when a drive is about to fail, the ability to let users add storage drives (of any size) or pull out dead drives while working with files, RAID-like redundancy, and drive status + capacity notifications via front-panel alert lights.
that's what your paying for, convinience...
jake @ Apr 10th 2007 6:48PM
@nial: Parity. As long as you still have n-1 drives and parity still working you can recover the data on the n-th drive.
LD @ Apr 10th 2007 6:48PM
@nial
FOUR 1TB drives - losing some for redundancy = ~2.7TB
I think you misread.
Brett @ Apr 10th 2007 6:54PM
Just to make sure I have this right, if I have 4 Macs on my home network. I have an apple AirPort Extreme Base Station with a USB port on it. I plug a Drobo into the AirPort Extreme Base Station, it backs up and acts like shared media for all the computers on my home network?
KazO @ Apr 10th 2007 6:51PM
It sounds like a mini DAS version of an Isilon IQ (I'm told MySpace is run on a pile of them), but without the 'clusterability'
Considering something like a Synology 406 or Thecus 5200 is ~$600 empty, this thing trades away NAS for the 'virtual array' technology for like money.
LD @ Apr 10th 2007 7:01PM
That's the gist of it. Drobo is really just a big hard drive to your PC, Mac, or fileserver. Don't overthink it, it's a big hard drive.
Brett @ Apr 10th 2007 7:07PM
So what does it use for back up, or I need to find my own backup software?
Brett @ Apr 10th 2007 7:16PM
What I mean by backup software is backing up the Mac's that are attached to the network.
Juaquin @ Apr 10th 2007 7:39PM
If it was $200, I'd take one. High price kills it.
tpp @ Apr 10th 2007 8:32PM
One thing I like about this drive is that it looks great. Too many external/NAS drives look like someone just scraped together some scrap metal and superglued them together.
Too expensive though. If it had NAS, maybe.
Dan @ Apr 10th 2007 8:58PM
Why not just get a 1TB or 2TB LaCie RAID box? They've got a FW800 version, a Gigabit Ethernet version, and a Serial ATA product. Everything you could need in a RAID box, and you don't have to go out and buy the drives separately, they're all included!
Check 'em out:
http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10061
http://www.lacie.com/products/range.htm?id=10007
Chubb @ Apr 11th 2007 12:19PM
Because Lacie drives suck.
CaptSaltyJack @ Apr 10th 2007 9:21PM
Wow, $700 for a big HD enclosure? Is Art Lebedev behind this?
earthling @ Apr 10th 2007 9:58PM
Here we go, drobo marketing machine to full power! Marketing statement:English Translation:verdict
Pooled virtualized storage : your data intelligently spread over avaiable, logically partitioned space in your 'pool' : Cool!
Unlike Raid 5: Well but not unlike other true raid systems. Lots of other RAID systems (infrant, others) can grow your array based on the volume you add provided that you pick one of their (probably semi-proprietary) raid systems. Unlike drobo, the other RAID systems can do this while maintaining relatively high performance. : meh
Storage pooling impact: Similar to other raid systems. The fact that the drobo has a lower minimum requirement for drives to perform 'protection' has some appeal but anyone serious about raid would want greater protection anyhow.: meh
The device can address unlimited storage: So can my wife. It is limited to 2TB volumes so as long as you are willing to have your storage cut up into unlimited 2TB volumes then I guess this is okay: double meh
drives are instantaneously available: With most raid systems, growing the storage array does not preclude you from adding more data, its just slower during the process: meh
Virtual hot spare: Well, most RAID systems support hot spares, some support live spares. whatever, having my data made redundant on the same drive that the original data is sitting on is little comfort. I feel better knowing that my data is on a real volume, my parity is on another. I have spares sitting there ready to swap in at a moments notice, this is called 'planning': triple meh
Data has corruption protection: BS. pure and simple. how exactly does that work. I have 500GB of total disk volume, I have two files, each 250GB. i corrupt one. Where is the good one? You have parity bits, if the data becomes corrupted it is detected and repaired through rebuilding from parity. Quit trying to make it sound like something special: Quad meh for marketing dribble
My personal favorite
For lack of necessity the device does not support firewire 400/800 (blah blah): I guess this is a bit of honesty. the overhead of the drobo storage pool virtualization is so high that you cannot approach firewire 400 speeds despite the fact that any one disk in the system could easily hit that rate individually (at peak, if you use fast drives): honesty!
It features NVRAM and a battery backup: Woah. it has enough battery to keep all the drives running long enough to flush out the remaining transactions to disk? really? Or do they mean that the settings won't get corrupted?: suspect
It will monitor drive health by its own system of metrics, and pre-emptively predict drive failures: Smart works, lots of systems support it, not exclusive to drobo but its cool that they support it at this price: cool!
Overall verdict, a kind-o-neat, self contained device that unfortunately is being pushed by too much hype and not enough facts, the marketing (some of which I do enjoy)is a bit over the top for a product that is obviously aimed at the hands off non-technologist, large storage requirements crowd (photojournalists, graphic artists, etc). Anyone technical would probably feel better with a real RAID which has many of these features and more (presumed) performance.
backuptoit @ Apr 11th 2007 12:35AM
Time Machine + Airport Disk will be enough of a backup for me. it's cheaper anyways.
rantanamo @ Apr 11th 2007 12:47AM
I actually beta tested this device. Much different than what you guys seem to think. Compared to other similar solutions, it really is a do it all. Very automatic compared to those others too.
futurepastnow @ Apr 11th 2007 12:56AM
"With four 1TB drives you would get 3TB addressable storage, and ~2.7TB after formatting."
So...it does RAID5. Whatever they call it, that's RAID5. Also, if it only formats either NTFS or HFS, that makes it really useless to people who have both Mac and Windows systems. Can't move it from one computer to the other.
And the price...wow. I built an 8-drive fileserver for less than that. This thing is garbage in comparison.
Evan @ Apr 11th 2007 11:13AM
futurepastnow, you may have been able to build something a lot cheaper, but not everyone has your skills! If you look at the price for a diskless Infrant Ready NAS (which is the obvious competition), it's about the same price, and we have no idea about performance. Maybe it's faster, for all you know.
hangon @ Apr 11th 2007 3:23AM
can't wait to get my hands on one.
even if it's really expensive.
matt @ Apr 11th 2007 5:00AM
Hey, i tried a couple of times to send you a message through the contact form, on a current Mac OS X 10.4.9, using opera / firefox and safari, and I it looks like not a single mesage got through.
could you please check your code?
in case you received 20 messages, sorry, but not really my fault. :(
--
hi there.
as you are the guys in the know, could you please post a comparison of the drobo with an infrant readynas NV+
I´m considering buying this nas box for a couple of months already, and really fail to see where the advantage of this drobo box is.
No even the price is better...
TIA Matt
hawkeye @ Apr 11th 2007 11:19AM
I'm trying to figure out how well this compares to the Infrant ReadyNAS NV+. Sound like the same thing minus useful interfaces (GbE is pretty much required IMO).
RaZor @ Apr 12th 2007 10:20PM
If anyone is actually interested in buying one, go to http://www.drobostore.com and be sure to use this discount code "REFPHILS" so you get $100 off. The codes expires on 5/30 though.
Steve @ Apr 24th 2007 4:19PM
You guys who don't see the utility of this device just don't get it, and I suspect that's because you've never struggled with real-world RAID issues. For example? Like what happens when you want to expand it, or shrink it, or move from RAID 1 to RAID 5, or from RAID 5 to RAID 6, or when one drive's failed and another is making a nasty noise while you're sweating bullets waiting hours (or days) for it to rebuild, and on top of all that, making the storage it provides to be seamlessly cross-platform accessible.
Well, after you're done sweating on Linux with mdadm and lvcreate, or looking at the paucity of similarly priced Mac/Windows solutions that do all this for you, you'll realize how lovely this looks when you want an RAID array that Just Works, and is a piece of cake to administer AS YOUR NEEDS EVOLVE. Or, for a clue without the sweat, read this excellent opinion by an observer with a lot of real-world experience in the storage field:
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/columnItem/0,294698,sid5_gci1246543,00.html
Dan Aldridge @ May 5th 2007 7:31AM
FYI - They just dropped the price of the drobo to $499, and if you use the code REFDANA, you'll get another $25.