Filed under: Enterprise, Hardware, Peripherals, Xserve
Drobo supersizes product line with the new, faster Drobo S and DroboElite
This morning, Data Robotics doubled the size of their Drobo storage line with two new products equipped with the proprietary BeyondRAID technology -- the Drobo S and the Drobo Elite.The Drobo S (at right) is a performance storage device designed to answer the question "Why isn't there a Drobo with an eSATA interface?" Not only does the Drobo S have the eSATA interface that many have requested, but the device is now equipped with an even faster ARM processor for enhanced FireWire 800 connectivity.
Like the DroboPro, the Drobo S can offer protection from two simultaneous drive failures. To do this and still offer a large amount of protected storage capacity, the Drobo S has five drive bays instead of the four on the original device, while still maintaining a small desktop footprint. The dual-drive redundancy option can be switched on or off at any time.
As with the DroboPro, the new member of the Drobo family has self-healing technology built-in. The device constantly examines the blocks and sectors of all drives, and flags questionable areas. By scrubbing the drives, data is only written to "healthy" areas on drives in the array.
Mark Fuccio of Data Robotics told TUAW that the eSATA interface provides data transfer up to 50% faster than what was available with FireWire 800, or about 90 MB per second.
Earlier in 2009, the DroboPro brought even more expandability to the Drobo line with eight available drive bays and an iSCSI (Gigabit Ethernet) interface. While the DroboPro had immediate success in locations with a single server, it couldn't multi-host -- in other words, it couldn't be used by multiple servers simultaneously.
The new DroboElite (back view seen below) is a true Storage Area Network device, with dual iSCSI interfaces. The dual interface allows not only better data transfer rates through gigabit switches, but provides redundancy in the case of one switch port failing. Connected to a gigabit Ethernet switch, businesses can share the capacity of the DroboElite amongst Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and VMWare servers. Fuccio noted that the data transfer rates with the dual iSCSI interfaces on the DroboElite can be up to 200 MB per second.
The Drobo S has a suggested retail price of US$799, and can be purchased in a configuration with five 2 TB drives for US$1799. The base DroboElite sells for US$3,499, and can be fully loaded with ten 2 TB drives (10.89 TB of usable storage with dual-drive redundancy, 12.48 TB with single-drive redundancy) for $5,899.
Data Robotics, Inc. says that they've shipped almost 90,000 Drobo units since the introduction of the device in 2008, with over 5,000 of the higher-priced DroboPro units going out the doors since their introduction in April. With the addition of the Drobo S and DroboElite to the product line, things look very bright indeed for the little black data robots.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
pjm said 8:42AM on 11-23-2009
Cue the comments...
Drobo takes another stinky dump and TUAW is on the scene yet again with all the details. But no pseudo-discount this time? Ah well... carry on.
Now, who was that complaining about all the snarkiness in TUAW comments?
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takamaru said 9:00AM on 11-23-2009
What's so wrong with drobo's to warrant such a comment?
Paul said 9:00AM on 11-23-2009
I have the firewire 800 version and it's super slow. A firewire 400 mybook seems faster. We've also had the pro version in the office and Drobo has been unwilling to help on why the drive in bay 1 died 3 times. I'm gonna have to pass on any future Drobo products.
But don't let my opinion stop you from wasting money :p
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Dave Wood said 9:04AM on 11-23-2009
I have two of the DroboPro's hooked up to Mac Pro (via iSCSI using a switch to get multiple units attached). 50 PC users all access their data via SMB.
Over the last few years, I've had 8 different network drives hooked up to the same server, and the DroboPro is by far the fastest, and most reliable.
I can't recommend these enough.
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Chris Leither said 9:12AM on 11-23-2009
I sign that... I got a Drobo 2nd gen... and though FW800 is not the fastest it's still plenty fast. The 'BeyondRAID' as they call it makes life that much more easier if you don't want to deal with expandanding your storage by first copying everything over to some other drive and then wiping your RAID only to have it rebuild with 2 new drives or so...
I also like the fact that you can stick 2.5" drives in there. They don't advertize this, but it works w/o a problem (as long as you stay stationary with your drobo, as these drives are not held in place as 3.5" drives are.)
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Quenlin said 9:22AM on 11-23-2009
The Drobo S is 400.00 more than the vanilla Drobo. How does adding 1 drive bay, a slightly faster processor, and an esata port double the cost of your product?
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synerage said 9:37AM on 11-23-2009
Unfortunately, most companies that target businesses, no matter how small, will jack up their prices because they can.
splat said 2:01PM on 11-23-2009
People complain about the apple tax, how about the drobo tax? Maybe they should consider a lower priced option that normal people can afford.
Pyrofallout said 9:25AM on 11-23-2009
Just a shame the Drobo S is priced at $799. At that price you can forget swaying most consumers into purchasing. They would have been better off replacing their current line with the new models rather than tacking on even more $$$ to a already high price tag.
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Pyrofallout said 9:33AM on 11-23-2009
Moreso, with a pricetag $400 more than the original Drobo, they could have at least had the decency to integrate DroboShare INTO the device at that price. Count me out Drobo.
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Rob said 9:40AM on 11-23-2009
I would take the Promise SmartStor DS4600 4x1TB RAID System sold by Apple over a Drobo system any day!!
Promise SmartStor DS4600 4x1TB RAID System is ONLY $800 and comes with 4 1TB drives. It has two Firewire 800 ports (that really work), one Firewire 400 port and one USB port.
IMHO, the Firewire 800 ports on the Promise SmartStor DS4600 4x1TB RAID System are FASTER than the Firewire 800 port on the standard Drobo. Read the reviews on the Drobo. A lot of people have complained about HOW SLOW the Drobo is. I guess that is the reason Drobo brought out this newer unit with a faster processor. But it is a lot MORE expensive.
IMHO, the Drobo is OVERLY expensive and OVER HYPED.
The Promise SmartStor DS4600 4x1TB RAID System is MUCH better value and really works.
See
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TX711VC/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MTMzNzkyMTc
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THJ said 9:53AM on 11-23-2009
Ignore the haters, Drobo is the greatest thing to hit the storage market since SSD, IMNSHO :P
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Joseph said 5:23PM on 11-23-2009
i think it hit before SSD.
Also, it is not greater than SSD.
ghoti said 10:21AM on 11-23-2009
I have two drobos and have nothing but love for them. I have all my movies and TV shows for my Apple TV stored on them and stream off of them with no issues. The one complaint I do have is that their support is not the greatest.
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hangon said 1:29PM on 11-23-2009
if you don't consider drobo as a backup solution , it's a very good product...it gives you high availability data storage and ease of expandability....
if you consider drobo (or any other 4 of 5 disk raid solution) as a backup solution YOU ARE WRONG.
no matter the media you choose when you do backup your datas has to be readable .... if a drobo fails or a raid fails you end up with 4 or 5 unreadable disks ..
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Matt said 10:36AM on 11-23-2009
I have a love/hate relationship with my Drobo. I love the technology, but have had a lot of issues and have found Drobo support and their customer service attitude to be very lacking.
I have had very significant issues with my Drobo Pro over iSCSI on a dedicated Ethernet port. In fact, for a period of days I would get the black screen of death when plugging the Drobo Pro into my ethernet connection.
My problems with this technology is ongoing.
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SweetBlue said 11:16AM on 11-23-2009
I'm unaffiliated with the company, nor a competitor, just a humble consumer. I've been stalking the Drobo for a while now, but the negative reviews re: their customer service keep me from buying. I'm simply unwilling to support a company which proves unwilling to support its consumer base. Granted, YMMV, but companies—especially in fenced communities like the Mac contingent—live or languish on the backbone of their reputations.
Joe said 10:36AM on 11-23-2009
I like the iSCSI option, but I am going to stick with my Infrant ReadyNAS for now.
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bcarney said 10:58AM on 11-23-2009
Are we still stuck with 2TB volumes? I purchased a maxed out Drobo Pro for a client, only to find out I had to partition it into eight volumes. That sucked.
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suneohair said 2:24PM on 11-23-2009
It is not limited to 2TB volumes. When you format the Drobo, you have the option to change the volume size up to 16TB.