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Data Robotics announces new Drobo FS
Data Robotics has just announced a new member of the Drobo family -- the Drobo FS. The new device is designed to serve as Network Attached Storage with all of the advantages of the Data Robotics BeyondRAID technology, with the added bonus of drop-dead simple setup. In a pre-release interview with Mark Fuccio of Data Robotics last week, he noted that setup on the device is as easy as installing the Drobo Dashboard software on a computer on the network, and then letting it handle all of the setup decisions for you. The device features a dual core processor, with one core running the embedded proprietary OS and the other core running Linux. The processor brings a lot of speed to the Drobo FS -- in testing, the device had about four times the speed of the former Drobo NAS solution, which was a Drobo plus the DroboShare device. Data Robotics noted that using Jumbo Frames, read speeds of up to 50-55MB/sec are possible. The Drobo FS has five storage bays, each of which can hold one standard 3.5" SATA hard drive. At the present time, the largest capacity of these drives is 2 TB, for a total of 9.1 TB of capacity or 5.44 TB with dual-disk redundancy (two drives can fail and the array can still operate flawlessly). As drive capacities grow in the future, the 2 TB drives can be replaced with larger drives, increasing the capacity of the array even more. The FS has a single Gigabit Ethernet port on the back for its connection to the world.
Drobo FS: finally, Data Robotics releases a Drobo NAS drive
Say it with us now: "finally!" We've been yearning for a true Drobo NAS drive ever since Data Robotics first introduced its "intelligent" storage robot back in the heyday that was 2007, and after coming darn close with the DroboShare, the company has finally produced a bona fide networked storage solution. The Drobo FS (for 'File Server') utilizes the same chassis as the Drobo S, and in terms of features, it can do everything that box can, too. What differentiates it, however, is that astoundingly gorgeous gigabit Ethernet jack on the rear, not to mention a new dual-core CPU, increased RAM, a revised Linux kernel and enough overall tweaks to make it perform 4x faster than the DroboShare. We spoke with Mark Fuccio, Senior Director of Products and Markets, who obliged when we dug for even more details. For starters, this device will boast five bays, and users can mix, match, upgrade and swap drives at will, just like any other Drobo. It'll also support network backups of Macs and PCs, and while you won't find a Time Machine stamp, the Time Tamer app available in the DroboApps portal will enable support for Mac loyalists who insist on using that over Data Robotic's (likely superior) solution. It also ships with a BitTorrent client that keeps your transfers humming even when your PC is off, and it'll handle iTunes, UPnP and DLNA streaming to boot. Firmware upgrades will be handled over the network, and users can poke around for even more applications by visiting the company's website. One app that stood out to us, however, was one that'll be thrown in by the recently renamed Oxygen Cloud; in essence, this will allow users to turn their Drobo FS into "the cloud," enabling colleagues or kids to remotely access the Drobo as if it were some faraway, magical data drive connected to a mythical T3. Yeah, this definitely feels more like a corporate thing than anything else, but it's certainly something that you won't find on those "other" NAS drives. It should be noted, however, that the app will only support a single user for free -- if you're buying for a corporation or small business, you'll need to hit up Oxygen Cloud to procure a multi-user license. Aside from nabbing SMB and AFP support, Mark told us that users could reasonably expect to see file transfers between 30MB/sec and 40MB/sec, but that's obviously subject to vary based on strain. As for pricing? Data Robotics told us that the new Drobo FS will be on sale globally today through the typical channels (Amazon, CDW, B&H Photo, Dell and NewEgg), with the empty unit selling for $699. A 4.5TB model (1.5TB x 3) will go for $999, while a 7.5TB version (5 x 1.5TB) lists for $1,149 and a 10TB edition (2TB x 5) for $1,449. Or you could just enter to win one here. Oh, and as for that DroboShare we mentioned earlier? It's being phased out with the introduction of the Drobo FS, so if you're jonesing for one, you might want to get that order placed. %Gallery-89838%
Drobo 4-bay storage robot now $100 less for dad, mankind
It's no secret that we're smitten with Drobo's storage "robots." But they're expensive, especially compared to direct-attached or NAS storage devices built on a traditional RAID architecture. But if price is holding you back then you'll be happy to hear that for a limited time, you can take 20% off the list price of the 4-bay array. If you're lucky, you already have a handful of loose drives to plug-in else why not stuff it to capacity for 8TB of disk this Father's Day? Granted, still no built-in Ethernet without the optional DroboShare, but at least you've got an extra paper hundie to dry your tears.
Working with a robot: Drobo in action
We've talked about the Data Robotics Drobo storage solution here on TUAW a few times, but there hasn't been a hands-on review of the device on this blog...until now.The Drobo is a mass storage solution that takes advantage of RAID -- Redundant Array of Independent Disks -- to provide a single large volume by combining two to four "naked" (not in an separate enclosure) hard disk drives. Drobo uses a proprietary system called "BeyondRAID" to do this while eliminating a lot of the administrative headaches that are normally associated with setting up RAID arrays.Drobo uses a combination of RAID 1 (mirroring) and RAID 5 (striping) to provide relatively fast response times and redundancy. If a drive fails, you simply pop it out of the array and pop in a new one. Drobo takes care of rebuilding the new disk while the array is in use. While many traditional RAID solutions require all drives to have exactly the same capacity, you can mix or match drive sizes with Drobo. This makes storage growth quite easy to manage -- as new, larger capacity hard drives appear in the future, you just need to pull out a smaller drive or two and replace them with the larger drives. Drobo takes care of integrating the new disk or disks into the array. Click the Read More link for the rest of this post.
Drobo gets dev community and SDK beta: run UPnP, BitTorrent, and any other servers you want
Looks like Data Robotics just started up their Drobo Developer Community (DDC) and SDK program, kicking off on their eventual goal to let users develop their own apps and servers for their Drobo storage device. For the first "DroboApp" and proof-of-concept, they've already whipped up a working UPnP / DLNA server for streaming audio and video content directly from the Drobo to compliant devices (like the Xbox 360 and PS3, for example), and they hope the early beta offering will spur the community into developing drop-in servers for things like iTunes music and AFP, Rsync, FTP, web, BitTorrent, and anything else you can think up. (One Linux developer has already ported the Drobo Dashboard app to Linux using the SDK).The DroboApps themselves are compiled for Linux, stored on the Drobo, added via drag and drop into a simple directory on the file system, and run on the Linux-based DroboShare hardware (meaning you won't be able to take advantage of DroboApps with a bare Drobo). Exciting stuff for the storage geeks in the house, especially those looking for some of the extensibility of Microsoft's Windows Home Server platform
DroboShare Drobo NAS mini-review
So we snagged a DroboShare to hook our lonesome, directly-attached Drobo into. At $200 for what's essentially a USB network adapter we had some pretty high expectations, but thankfully we've been pretty impressed so far. Setup simply entails upgrading your Drobo hardware and Dashboard software to the latest versions (v1.1), restarting the box, and then plugging into the DroboShare. That's it. Detection, configuration, everything else is entirely automatic. Within a few moments it auto-mounts as a shared network drive via SMB, regardless of what file system the Drobo itself is running, or whether you're running Windows or Mac. (For those running on Linux or other operating systems, the DS is still accessible over your network via standard SMB share just like any other server.)Click on for more on network auto-mounting and a couple speed tests.%Gallery-13693%
DroboShare makes your Drobo NAS -- for a price
The number one complaint about the Drobo is pretty obvious: getting the damn thing on your network without using a host computer. Well, consider that complaint sorted. Today Data Robotics is releasing a NAS upgrade for Drobo called the DroboShare, which will support: Gigabit Ethernet (yes!), static or dynamic IPs Auto-mounting SMB shares via Drobo Dashboard (supports SMB authentication) Dual USB 2.0 ports for two Drobos per DroboShare EXT3 file system support (officially!) Capacities up to 16TB per Drobo (provided you feed it 4TB drives that won't be out until, say, 2010) And possibly our favorite: email alerts, should a drive happen to crash, for example It's also worth noting that Drobo is still capable of switching between NAS and direct-attached modes if you decide you want to take your Drobo OFF the network (but why would you do a thing like that?). The biggest problem with this add-on? It's $200, which brings the total cost of a DroboShare NAS rig to $700 -- without drives. Still, we have a feeling for many a Drobo user -- ourselves included -- the value of the functionality will far outweigh the borderline unreasonable price tag.%Gallery-13560%
