How would you change the Drobo FS?
By Darren Murph 
posted July 31st 2010 1:01AM
posted July 31st 2010 1:01AM
posted July 31st 2010 1:01AM
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Had purchased this as a backup NAS for my office. Populated all drive bays with 1.5TB 7200 WD drives. Unfortunately the network performance was horrible. We run gig throughout the office and write speeds were nearly 1/10 the speed of our Windows file server that resides on an entirely different subnet, that likely traverses multiple router hops. I didn't expect network performance to be this bad with the Drobo. My guess would be the underlying hardware of the Drobo would be to blame. Maybe this thing just can't process the read/write requests like a normal file server. Not that we were necessarily banging on it... normal test would include backing a single PC at a time.
Would've liked to see some love in terms of AD integration for authorization/authentication purposes. Instead you must maintain local accounts on the Drobo to delegate access! I saw that there was a third party app for the Drobo that was supposed to handle this (don't recall the name of it right now). However, when we had the Drobo this app wasn't available yet and looks like it was going to cost $ for the app anyway. This seems like a no-brainer. AD integration should be standard.
Luckily we were able to return the Drobo to the vendor. This unit isn't all bad though. The RAID options were very nice. There technology seems really cool that you can mix and match drive sizes/brands. Also, this would be a great solution for home users. I think speeds would suffice for nightly backup, as you wouldn't necessarily care about speed when you're asleep :) Streaming multimedia however I would like to see before saying this thing is capable or not of that.
Make it cheaper!
I'd like some independent reviews of the latest generation of Drobo devices. For some reason, those are practically nonexistent. I'm not gonna plunk down $100s on something that has no independent opinions available. There's also the issue of the data format being exclusive to Data Robotics, so if your Drobo goes down and you can't get a new Drobo for any reason, your data is toast
I have (5) 2TB drives in it, and while it performs *ok* on the network, it can't handle many simultaneous transfers (like streaming videos to two different media players), and it seems to take FOREVER to mount on Windows.
Also, the dashboard sucks. It works maybe half the time. Just make a web-based configuration hosted on the machine itself.
I like the Drobo a lot. Only things I'd fix are the price and the name. Make it a tad cheaper and call it the "Drobo FFS" so we can all get a little laugh out of it.
I had a 2nd Gen Drobo. My gripes with it were that it was very slow in terms of speed even with Firewire 800, compared to other FW800 devices. It's ease of use and simplicity were top-notch. I begged the company to consider a model with eSATA, and they did. It was the Drobo S, but the trouble is that it was ungodly expensive with no drives.
I eventually got rid of Drobo and got a OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2 (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/), for about half the price of a Drobo S.
That said, The Drobo FS looks very nice, but their prices are far too high for enclosure only solutions. They need to find a way to increase the bang for buck and value. It's not even a better value if you purchase with drives.
They do have promotions from time to time, but they are something like only $50 off.
For me, I would like to see a NAS unit that has eSATA as well that allows both to be used simultaneously. For instance, the unit is on my network 24/7, but when I need speed, I hook up an eSATA cable and transfer that way. It should be able to leave the NAS online while still allowing eSATA transfers.
I wouldn't change it...I just wouldn't buy it. lol
It is sooo slow slow slow, making it utterly useless. Bot the FS and the 1st and 2nd gen Firewire Drobo's. I really do wonder how they last so long, selling unusable junk.
@rafbuff The only time I've seen mine slow is when a drive fails and it has to rebuild. I use mine for music and video storage and don't have any issues with it. I don't know of any systems with redundancy that aren't slow at rebuilds though.
@smcnally Mine creeps both at directory parsing and read and write. No rebuilds, nothing special going on.
I would really like to see the UI for Apps management be as clean and easy to use as the Dashboard. Seems silly that a device marketed on ease-of-use has neglected the other side of the equation.
Don't get me wrong: this thing is super-reliable and stable. I just wish it were easier to customize (not everybody is a unix wonk).
Oh, and cheaper would be nice, too!
My 2 cents worth:
Ive got a DroboPro - got one when the first came out - i had an old terastation and various external discs lying around, decided to take it on the chin and try it out. I think they released it to early (at the time) as twice i lost all of my stuff, but, the second time i had a backup and now after about 9 months or so its been fine. Between the server and the Drobo, incredibly fast, lightning. but, when im transferring from machines on the network through the server to the DroboPro im only getting about a 1/3 of the speed but its something im willing to put with as i dont do that many hard transfers, mostly streaming. All in all, good product, but as someone else commented on here the synology is pretty good also (but, only 5 bays) - more functionality though - all in all im happy. People do moan about the price but you get what you pay for. When i did have the problems earlier on Drobo support were very good and proactive.
Two more protocols:
- iSCSI
- WebDAV
Likewise, the Drobo Pro should gain AFP and SMB/CIFS.
I'd put it in a Microwave.
I own a Drobo S and the ease of setup made it worth every overpaid penny. I purchased it for a media center and my biggest complaint is the noise of the thing. My media center is silent, but the Drobo is pretty noisy. I'd swap the fan's however since I just bought it I'm not ready to void the warranty. The other changes I would make is join the Drobo S & Drobo FS into a single unit. There is no reason why one unit cannot have all of those interfaces. Oh and cheaper would be good as well
I have used many NAS drives over the past 10 years, (A PC, D-Link, Linksys, Synology, Drobo ver 1, Drobo shareDrobo FS)
So far, the FS performs the best of the lot and finally includes file/folder permissions; BUT, has some serious AFP issues, phantom files keep showing up, as well as unable to copy, move, delete or modify some files. To get around this, you must log back into the drive with SMB - then it works fine.
The original Drobo, and with Drobo share, is good for network sharing, but doesn't support permissions.
After many arguments with myself i finally decided to buy a Drobo FS and sell my Netgear ReadyNas Duo.
First i start with the bad things about the Drobo-FS and company:
- Price is really "tasty" and scary even.
- The companies forum pages is not accessible if you don't OWN a product and can provide a valid serial number.
- Customer support dont care to answer your questions if you dont own a product (asked the many questions before buying but never got an answer)
- Even if i don't miss this now i would have preferred to have a USB port to connect my external drives to the Drobo.
- Drobo-FS is actually more silent then my netgear but i would prefer it to be even more silent if possible. Right now i can hear it during work.
- Last but not least, i would like to have web interface for the administration. Today this can only be done using their application.
So to the more positive things:
- It works just as @Texasyoungin explains it. Its extremely easy to use and you never have to mess with any configuration or anything. It just works!
- Its future prof with the 16TB size (atleat for now hehe)
- It responds much faster then my Netgear ever did.
- The indicators on the front is very helpful to tell you the status.
All and all i'm happy with my FS performance and really like the simplicity of it.
OK, now I got it, the issue is AFP. It's sloooooooooow. If you use SMB mounts, you are fine. (smb://YourDrobo/YourShare in Finder Connect to Server). This is kind of sad considering that the Drobos target a Mac audience. But then AFP sucks even more than SMB...
as we sell these at work ( www.span.com)
ive had a chance to test it quite a bit. as for how i would change it. first off dual ports for failover/ load balancing.
Much lower price, better interface with more features, faster cpu and more ram to improve performance, oh and remove those damn awful flimsy plastic flaps on the drive slots that break as soon as you look at them. in fact id simply not even buy a drobo and get a much better synology or qnap instead!
Lower cost
A built in battery backup, at least as an option possibly in a small enclosure under the Drobo, AFTER the power supply.
In addition to the Power On/AC OK indicator light you would need a Battery OK indicator light. Stand by time only needs to be a few minutes. Enough to let Drobo do a controlled shutdown.
I own a Drobo FS but mostly on a network of Windows/Linux machines. Initially had trouble connecting to the share, but with the dashboard update, works perfectly. Put in three 1.5TB WD Caviar drives which is still running happily. Sadly, Drobo folks have encrypted the logs and am not able to troubleshoot too many problems myself. However, their technical support was prompt and helpful. I haven't had problems with too much noise since it sits in a separate room.
I would like to see a price decrease, open logs (or at least some information would be better than none), better applications that are optimized for drobo such as ssh/file sharing apps/ftp server (currently just makes use of Apache web server and ssh from open source platform).
As the owner of both a second-gen Drobo and a Drobo FS, here's my wishlist:
1) lower price. I had a promo code for $100 off of my FS, but even then my wallet wasn't happy with the price.
2) Add a web interface. The Drobo Desktop software works okay, but there have been times when it has been unable to detect the Drobo FS, and the only solution was to reboot the computer (or in one case, to downgrade to a previous version of the software). This is a problem, especially when one has to use the software if one wants to put the device into standby mode.
3) Support for different BitTorrent clients. Yes, it's got one BT app via DroboApps, but I'd love to be able to run Transmission on the Drobo FS and interact with it via the Transmission web interface.
4) quieter. The drives can be set to spin down after X minutes of inactivity, but the fan seems to run all the time. If my Mac Mini can go into a completely silent sleep mode but still wake on LAN activity, I'd think that the Drobo FS should be able to do the same.
5) support for a scripting language or smart folders. I want to be able to dump files into a folder and have Hazel-like rules do the dirty work of moving them to specific folders, renaming them, propagating them to other servers, etc.
6) fix the power supply. The PSU brick that came with my Drobo FS emits a high-pitched whine. It drives me batty, but fortunately (?) it's mostly drowned out by the hum of the device's fan.
DROID meets the ROBOT
definitely drop the price and speed up the wake time. it would be nice to have even just a usb 2.0 plug so that we can use this without a network.
I hate the piece of software you gotta install for Drobo management. I think it would be better if it would have an integrated web interface like every other NAS out there. Also this can use more drive bays. It also needs to be cheaper. Other than the BeyondRaid thing, its just a regular NAS.
Built in in-kernel NFS support as uNFS is sort of slow compared to kernel, and it would be nice if NFS was a builtin feature rather than an add-on app.
A web interface (really? a desktop client for a network-only device).
Finally better iSCSI support would be _really_ nice.
I love my Drobo FS so far, but have a small wish list:
• Drobo's Dashboard should be redesigned for Mac or move to a web interface. Considering the premium price tag, the software should match the look and feel. The current app looks like from OS9 days.
• Have it be able to be completely silent when in sleep mode. The fan currently stays on 24/7
• Data throughput should be faster. When accessing it with one device the speed is fine, but I have 2 macs backing themselves up every hour and when I want to watch a HD movie from my iTunes library I get the occasional hiccup. (Someone suggested switching to SMB mounts, I will try that)
• Offer more built-in software. Using droboapps is fine, but the developers seem to be slow to support it and the level of know-how needed doesn't match the simplicity of the device