Drobo -new faster/functional hardware

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
www.drobo.com



They announced a 5-Bay model named the Drobo S which is almost as fast as their current Drobo Pro (70-90 MBps). It has eSATA, FW800 and USB 2.0 connections. It starts at $799





The cherry though is the new Drobo Elite.



8-Bays like the Drobo Pro but it offers two GigE ports for iSCSI and full SAN manangement. In addition it scrubs the hard drives for data corruption prevention.



VMware certified and a host of other software features. It starts at about $3400 I believe and will be up to 175MBps throughput.







Not bad for the Apple of storage.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    Where did you see the performance data?



    On the sheet I looked at, it described the DroboS as 25% faster than the current model.

    Which is like 25% faster than a snail.



    C.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Carniphage View Post


    Where did you see the performance data?



    On the sheet I looked at, it described the DroboS as 25% faster than the current model.

    Which is like 25% faster than a snail.



    C.



    Drobo employee commented in a Blog posting.



    Quote:

    Hi Yacko – Jim Sherhart from Data Robotics here. As you know performance is always dependent on the environment and workload, but we have consistently seen 70-90MB/s with the Drobo S using eSATA and 100-175MB/s with the DroboElite using iSCSI



  • Reply 3 of 15
    bjnybjny Posts: 191member
    Is there a Mac-friendly full-featured NAS unit capable of 50+ MB/s transfer rate?

    Does anyone use a QNAP?

    I want access to my files from wherever via the Internet.



    Newbie.
  • Reply 4 of 15
    Does anyone have experience using a Drobo on a Mac? I'm considering one for upgradeable long-term storage - probably the the basic 4-bay with use FW800. Any issues or tricks to be aware of?



    @BJNY, it seems the DroboShare can do that...
  • Reply 5 of 15
    jaddiejaddie Posts: 110member
    Dear mbmcavoy



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mbmcavoy View Post


    Does anyone have experience using a Drobo on a Mac? I'm considering one for upgradeable long-term storage - probably the the basic 4-bay with use FW800. Any issues or tricks to be aware of?



    Just make sure you're using the latest version of Drobo Dashboard. Also, I recommend going with the 16TB volume unless you have a good reason for choosing smaller.



    --Jaddie
  • Reply 6 of 15
    As far as I am concerned, this is the Apple of storage-



    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...ng/MEQX2T8.0E/



    eSATA - 3.0Gbit (or 300MB/sec)

    FireWire 800 (1394B) - 800Mbps (or 100MB/sec)

    USB 2.0 - 480Mbps (or 60MB/sec)

    FireWire 400 (1394A) - 400Mbps (or 50MB/sec)
  • Reply 7 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stevegmu View Post


    eSATA - 3.0Gbit (or 300MB/sec)

    FireWire 800 (1394B) - 800Mbps (or 100MB/sec)

    USB 2.0 - 480Mbps (or 60MB/sec)

    FireWire 400 (1394A) - 400Mbps (or 50MB/sec)



    You are listing protocol speeds as if they translate to actual usage speeds. I have done quite a bit of testing with external RAIDs and can get about 66MiB/sec on FireWire 800, about 37MiB/sec on FireWire 400, and about 32MiB/sec on USB2. I treat those numbers as near-best for each of those connections. Real application performance will be slower than that. I don't have eSATA on my machine, so don't have numbers for that.
  • Reply 8 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Karl Kuehn View Post


    You are listing protocol speeds as if they translate to actual usage speeds. I have done quite a bit of testing with external RAIDs and can get about 66MiB/sec on FireWire 800, about 37MiB/sec on FireWire 400, and about 32MiB/sec on USB2. I treat those numbers as near-best for each of those connections. Real application performance will be slower than that. I don't have eSATA on my machine, so don't have numbers for that.



    I actually get advertised speeds on the OWC Mercury Elite external drives I have- through FW 800.
  • Reply 9 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stevegmu View Post


    I actually get advertised speeds on the OWC Mercury Elite external drives I have- through FW 800.



    You get 100 MiB/sec of data transfer? Really? That is actually impossible since all protocols have overhead, and the 800 Mbit/second speed is the raw theoretical push-the-bits speed that includes all protocol bits in the count, and does not allow for any latency in device response at all (never achieved).



    All transfer systems are going to get less than their maximum efficiency, and more than just one or two percent off. If you even think you are approaching 100MiB/sec on FireWire you have some serious measuring errors.
  • Reply 10 of 15
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stevegmu View Post


    As far as I am concerned, this is the Apple of storage-



    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...ng/MEQX2T8.0E/



    eSATA - 3.0Gbit (or 300MB/sec)

    FireWire 800 (1394B) - 800Mbps (or 100MB/sec)

    USB 2.0 - 480Mbps (or 60MB/sec)

    FireWire 400 (1394A) - 400Mbps (or 50MB/sec)



    I believe these guys are the Apple of Storage. Especially since the company was founded by the Apple Xserve RAID design team. This stuff is so cool.



    http://www.getactivestorage.com/
  • Reply 11 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Karl Kuehn View Post


    You get 100 MiB/sec of data transfer? Really? That is actually impossible since all protocols have overhead, and the 800 Mbit/second speed is the raw theoretical push-the-bits speed that includes all protocol bits in the count, and does not allow for any latency in device response at all (never achieved).



    All transfer systems are going to get less than their maximum efficiency, and more than just one or two percent off. If you even think you are approaching 100MiB/sec on FireWire you have some serious measuring errors.



    Perhaps the stopwatch on my phone is off, or you are used to shoddy hardware. I transfer 5 GB files multiple times/day in under 1 min.
  • Reply 12 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by WelshDog View Post


    I believe these guys are the Apple of Storage. Especially since the company was founded by the Apple Xserve RAID design team. This stuff is so cool.



    http://www.getactivestorage.com/



    Those seem pretty sweet, but the lack of an online retailer pretty much excludes them from my consideration.
  • Reply 13 of 15
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jaddie View Post


    (Drobo) I recommend going with the 16TB volume unless you have a good reason for choosing smaller.



    Currently my storage needs are modest, easily under 500GB. My photos are collecting, and I expect to be doing home video, including HD in the future. I'm mostly concerned with reliability with a budget, not capacity or super performance. The appeal of the Drobo is the ability to start small (i.e., a pair of 1TB drives), and then grow the capacity as I need it. Getting it fully stocked out of the gate negates that benefit...



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stevegmu View Post


    As far as I am concerned, this is the Apple of storage-

    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...ng/MEQX2T8.0E/



    Those look sweet indeed, but hard to justify... How about the two-bay "Mercury Elite-AL Pro 800 RAID MIRROR"? The 1TBx2 version is the about the same price as an empty Drobo! Although since these can't grow, I would agree the 2TBx2 would be the way to go.



    If I fill it up, get another (or future equivalent) and keep it as an offline archive!



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by WelshDog View Post


    I believe these guys are the Apple of Storage. http://www.getactivestorage.com/



    OK, there is no way I could justify that!
  • Reply 14 of 15
    ppieppie Posts: 14member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stevegmu View Post


    Perhaps the stopwatch on my phone is off, or you are used to shoddy hardware. I transfer 5 GB files multiple times/day in under 1 min.



    Hmm. Calculating 5 x 1024 MB / 60 gets me 85 MB/sec, not your 100 MB sec.

    You either mean 51.2 seconds with your 'in under 1 min', your file is not 5 GB or the stopwatch on your phone is off...
  • Reply 15 of 15
    docno42docno42 Posts: 3,755member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mbmcavoy View Post


    Currently my storage needs are modest, easily under 500GB. My photos are collecting, and I expect to be doing home video, including HD in the future. I'm mostly concerned with reliability with a budget, not capacity or super performance. The appeal of the Drobo is the ability to start small (i.e., a pair of 1TB drives), and then grow the capacity as I need it. Getting it fully stocked out of the gate negates that benefit...



    I think you misunderstand him. Drobo's biggest benefit is it supports "thin provisioning". That is you can create a volume larger than you have physical disk for. This allows you to grow the size of your drobo non-destructively. So when you do get your Drobo you don't want to make a 1TB volume but something bigger than you need now so you can grow into it. There are some performance penalties for making larger volumes. Since it's impossible to get 16TB in a four slot Drobo, I used 8.



    The problem I have with every other solution mentioned in this thread is if you wish to re-configure your array, you have to back up your data, destroy your array, and then restore your data. And you have to match drives - all have to be changed at once.



    With drobo I either just plug a hard drive in, or pull out my smallest drive And replace it with a bigger one. That's it.



    Now, which of those sound more Mac-like?



    For small business the Drobo elite is amazing - iSCSI, multiple computer support, thin provisioning, extreme flexibility in array expansion... The value they ate offering is huge.



    When other vendors allow me to non-distructively change my array and mix and match different capacity hard drives I'll start looking at them again, but Drobo has raised the bar pretty high over just RAID.
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