As data backup and media servers become more prevalent, they also become more complicated, with ever more devices to sync and ways to store information. Today, Iomega released a new NAS appliance that can serve as both a backup device and a media server with a view to streamlining the setup process for home or small business users, while implementing a few features that are more commonly seen in larger-scale networked servers.

The newest iteration of Iomega's NAS appliance line, the dual-drive StorCenter ix2-200, has many of the features that you'd want to see in a media server or a backup target. As a backup device, the StorCenter can be set up as a Time Machine target for Macs and for remote access, so that the user can manage and upload or download files from anywhere with an Internet connection. It has three USB ports that allow direct interaction with other devices, such as external drives or a printer (the unit can act as a print server).

Iomega's put quite a few other bells and whistles into this NAS. The unit can stream media to Xbox 360 & PS3 consoles, and to many iTunes-compatible music devices. It's also Bluetooth-capable, allowing a smart phone to sync with it, but this requires the separate purchase of a USB-Bluetooth dongle. The StorCenter is VMware-certified as an iSCSI and NFS storage device, supports direct streaming from up to five Axis network cameras, and can even serve as a BitTorrent client.

One of the more interesting features for backup use is the device-to-device replication. The StorCenter can be set up to perform any number of "copy jobs" to sync data automatically to and froms various devices and files at scheduled intervals. It also has a QuikTransfer button on its front, to which you can attach any number of copy jobs that will be performed automatically when pressed, rather than having to wait for scheduled maintenance. For example, if you regularly import videos to your computer and want them backed up, synced to the computer upstairs, and put on another external hard drive you carry with you, you can plug the drive into the StorCenter, press the copy button, and voila! It's all done at once! (Of course, you have to set it up that way first. It's a button, not a mind-reader.)

Data Robotics delivered their "super-sized" version of the Drobo earlier this year. DroboPro has 8 drive bays into which you can drop 3.5" SATA drives of almost any capacity, from the old 160 GB model you've been using to hold the backup of your iTunes library to that 2 TB Western Digital Caviar drive you just purchased. Using a proprietary storage technology called BeyondRAID, Data Robotics makes it easy to use a DroboPro to give you a big box 'o storage right now, and easily expand in the future.

Data Robotics recently lent me a DroboPro for a detailed review, and I was able to give it a thorough workout. Read on to find out more about the DroboPro and an excellent deal available to readers of TUAW.

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.

By now, you've probably heard about Drobo. It's the ultimate RAID-like array, with USB and Firewire 800 connections, that allows you to store up to 6 terabytes using 4 hard drives (you get about 4.1 TB of usable space, since some of the room is used for RAID redundancy -- see the Drobolator capacity calculator for the details). Not too long ago they released DroboShare, a way to turn Drobo into a NAS (network attached storage device) with Gigabit Ethernet. If you have both a Drobo and DroboShare, you can now run DroboApps.

Because Drobo is built on a small version of the Linux open source OS, you are able to run these lightweight applications that can do some awesome things. There are currently around 20 applications that can create an iTunes media server (Firefly), or limit the total size of a Time Machine backup (Time Tamer), among other functions.

If you're a Drobo owner, you might want to check out these cool new applications. And if you're a developer, why not take a look at the Drobo development SDK?

For those of you who were waiting to buy a Data Robotics Drobo, wait no longer!

Data Robotics announced the release of the second iteration of their 4-bay expandable storage solution, Drobo. Many potential buyers were aghast at the original version's lack of FireWire, so the company added FireWire 800 (FireWire 400 compatible) ports to the original USB 2.0 connection. Transfer speeds with FireWire 800 are expected to be about double those of the USB connection.

The new Drobo also has improved software. The old model would see a drop in performance after the array reached about 50% of capacity. With the new software, performance remains steady regardless of how much data you've packed into your Drobo. Data Robotics says Mac users can expect a performance increase of 10 - 200%.

When new, higher-capacity drives become available, you'll be able to expand the capacity of your Drobo to up to 16 TB. That should be enough to handle all of my TUAW comment email! The second-generation Drobo becomes available in about three weeks, and the original $499 price tag is still in effect for an unpopulated box (no drives included).

Updated to note that no FireWire 400 ports are included. Thanks to Neg and See3Pio for the heads-up!

One of the features prominently touted by Apple in the new XSan 2 is its support for 3rd party storage solutions. It looks like there is a very good reason for that: Apple is no longer making the Xserve RAID. That's right, if you head on over to the XServe Raid's former home on Apple.com you're greeted with some information about the Promise VTrak E-Class RAID Subsystem, and a link to find out more on Promise's website.

It would seem that Apple wasn't making enough money in the fast paced Enterprise storage market and is bowing out. This makes lots of sense to me, since (for the most part) storage is a commodity market, and that is something Apple has never been interested in. Now the company can focus on making the software that one uses to power and manage your SAN (i.e. XSan 2) the best in the market (and judging from the screenshots it looks a lot better than most SAN software I've used).

Thanks, Tim.

In addition to dropping the price on the Shuffle (and introducing the 2 GB version), today's big Apple store update appears to be the launch of Xsan 2. Xsan is Apple's Storage Area Network (SAN) file system, and while this update isn't as sexy as a new consumer laptop update, it's still pretty cool.

Xsan 2 has been received some significant updates; not only is it now fully compatible with both OS X Leopard and OS X Server Leopard (in fact, Leopard is required to run Xsan 2), it is also now qualified to work with third-party RAID storage.

Even more exciting (at least for anyone who has been holding out for some kind of Final Cut server solution) is the introduction of what Apple is calling, MultiSAN. MultiSAN, according to Apple, "[allows] users on a single workstation to access multiple SANs at the same time." Using the video editing example, this means that a segment producer could access both a broadcast and b-roll volume from the same machine. Additionally, the administration tools have been redesigned. Administrators can now create pre-set volume workload settings for different file types/purposes.

To be clear, this is an enterprise product. Xsan 2 is available now for $999 US. Xsan 2 is qualified to work with the Xserve, Mac® Pro and Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X cards, as well as qualified Fibre Channel switches and RAID storage hardware from third-party vendors.

Update: As Tim in the comments pointed out, it appears that Apple's Xserve RAID device is no more. The page now re-directs here, with a link to Promise's RAID solution.

Let me ask you something: do you like fast storage? Redundant, fast storage? Lots and lots of gigabytes of fast, redundant storage? Sure you do, buddy -- but what's with the software RAID on your Mac Pro or your Intel-based XServe? That's so last week, now that Apple is shipping the RAID cards for Mac Pro and XServe; you can now do hardware RAID 0, 1, 5, or (Mac Pro only) 0+1 arrays of SATA drives, or superfast SAS drives on the XServe, for the precise mix of speed and reliability that you're craving.

Formerly only available as build-to-order options but now shipping as add-in parts for $999 each, the cards come with a raft of requirements. First, they're only for the machines mentioned above; G5 XServes are out of luck. Second, you can't mix and match drive types on the XServe, it's all SAS or all SATA please. Third, a minor point, barely worth mentioning really, but both these cards are listed as requiring some sort of OS update. Yes, on the heels of this morning's announcement of the MacBook revisions, we now have a total of three pieces of Apple hardware that demand Leopard to work at all.

Update: Clarified that the cards were previously available as BTO parts. Note that even though the specifications say Leopard-only for these cards, existing RAID cards (and possibly these as well, for anyone brave enough to spend a grand to test them) continue to work with Tiger.

via Apple Hot News -- thanks Nelson

Oh Apple, you sly devil, what with all the secretly upgrading hardware and not even telling us. Thanks to eagle-eyed reader Eric Wortman, we now also found that the Mac Pro gained a RAID card option for those who need mounds of storage and a secure, redundant system with which to manage it. The card supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1, and Enhanced JBOD. The card also features a 256MB cache and a 72 hour battery with which to protect that cache, and it occupies the top PCI Express card slot, connecting to all four internet drive bays.

What's all this RAID connectivity going to cost you? A cool $999 on top of the price of your Mac Pro.

TUAW reader omdot has posted a sweet shot of his Mac mini raid - artfully arranged, we might add - to our Flickr pool. He uses it as a backup of his main Linux system, and it updates itself hourly. Pretty cool.

"mini RAID no. 2" posted by omdot.

If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Each Sunday (or Monday) we'll comb through the most recent entries and declare a "Rig of the Week!"

There's been a lot of buzz the last few days about Drobo, the "storage robot" from Data Robotics. The best way to get a sense of what it can do is to watch this promotional video. Basically, the Drobo, which has four SATA drive bays, plugs into your Mac via USB and looks to the Mac just like a large USB mass storage device. According to our blog compadres over at Engadget (who have the full skinny), it "uses pooled virtualized storage" (not RAID) to create what looks to your Mac like a single drive, but which has data protection and redundancy features. Best of all, the hard drives are hot swappable. You can add and remove hard drives on the fly without corrupting your data either because of hard drive failure or merely to add more storage space. All of this is transparent to the host computer, which never notices anything has happened.

All of this storage robotics coolness is expensive, however. The Drobo sells for $699 without any drives. You'll need to install at least two SATA hard drives in the Drobo and it handles all the rest.

[Via UNEASYsilence]

You'd think, judging on the name alone, that iSCSI was an Apple product -- perhaps an easier-to-use, shiny, beveled version of the original SCSI? If wishing made it so: sadly, it's only an implementation of SCSI over IP, allowing hosts to connect to remote drives, RAIDs, SANs or tape libraries over standard Ethernet connections. While early iSCSI gear was noticeably slow compared to Fibre Channel and other storage fabric connections, the latest stuff is quite snappy, especially when combined with 10G Ethernet connectivity.

Up until now, the only iSCSI initiators (drivers) available for Mac OS X were paid affairs, usually bundled with hardware or management tools. Now, in advance of the anticipated inclusion of iSCSI with Leopard, the good people at Studio Network Solutions have proffered up a free-as-in-beer version of the globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OS X. No support offered, so download and deploy with caution.

[via MacTech]

When it rains it pours as the Morton Salt company says, which really has nothing to do with this post. First Apple updates the Xserve RAID and then they update the Xserve RAID Admin Tools 1.5.1. I smell conspiracy. No, wait, that's just the salt again.

This update brings support for the larger disks in the slightly revamped Xserve RAID, as well as a number of other fixes that are listed in the support doc.

Thanks, Chris.

Attention Apple enterprise geeks: Apple has just updated the Xserve RAID. The Xserve RAID, in case you are not aware, is Apple's very competitively priced storage solution. The Xserve RAID can now be configured to sport 14 750 GB drives, which translates to a whopping 10.5TB (that's a lot of iTunes tracks), up from 7TB.

Also of note, the two top tier pre-configured versions have dropped in price ($300, and $600 cheaper respectively). The 500 GB drive modules have also been priced down from $649 to $599.

Go forth and get your storage on, as the kids say (the kids say that, right?).

Thanks, Jonathan.

When you think Apple most people think iPods not enterprise level storage solutions, but that may all be changing (well, in the enterprise at least). It is no secret that Apple's XServe RAID is one of the best values on the market and that has allowed Apple to rise from the 12th spot in the storage market to the 10th spot in a year (based on $185 million in sales).

Some more interesting bits:

• Apple has shipped 76 petabytes of storage
• roughly 40% of XServe RAIDS are in non-Mac environments