In particular, you can upgrade storage by simply popping put a drive, and popping in a higher capacity replacement. No configuration is necessary. If there are empty bays, you can increase capacity simply by sliding in a new drive. The Drobo sees the new/replacement drive, and automatically configures it into the system, and moves data around as necessary.
Originally, I had three 4 TB drives in my Drobo. As my storage needs have increased, drive prices have come down, I have migrated drives to my current config of five 8TB drives.
You can configure a DROBO for single or dual drive redundancy. If a drive fails, and you have enough free space on the remaining drives, it will move data around to regain redundancy. Suppose you have five 5TB drives configured for single drive redundancy. That gives you 20TB of useable space. Suppose you are only using 10TB of that. Further suppose that just after you leave on Friday night, one of the drives dies. By the time you get back on Monday morning, the DROBO would have automatically reconfigured itself as a four drive system with 15TB of useable space. On Monday when you get in, just pop out the dead drive and slide in a new drive, and the DROBO will start using it. If, on Monday, a second drive fails before you have replaced the first failed drive, you won't lose any data as the system had already configured itself as a four drive system with redundancy.
It would be a shame for DROBO to go away. Their products are very easy to use.
Assuming they do go away, are there any other products out there that allow such easy storage space expansion?
No - you mean they have some features that other storage systems have had for YEARS! There's nothing special or unique about any of the features you mentioned.
Can you give me a specific recommendation for some other storage systems with these features? I am in the market and Drobos are not currently available for purchase.
I am looking for a device that allows me to increase capacity simply adding an additional drive, or by replacing an existing drive with a larger drive. This should not require me to take the unit offline. Ideally, it won't require messing around with configuration software, but I can live with that.
The unit should also not lose data if a single drive fails. Ideally, if there is enough space, when a drive fails, the device should reshuffle data to protect me against a second drive failure.
My Gen1 is still running in the corner for my local work data and has been running well for I think it must be 15 years now. I actually travelled overseas with that unit on assignment and it even survived airline baggage.
My 5D is also about a decade old and running on the daily.
I will admit I do dismantle, clean, grease and service them myself every year and bought a few replacement fans (my 5D was always noisy and running warm - when I pulled it apart the first time I noticed the fan was installed backwards once that was fixed it was a trooper).
They had the NAS to NAS backup which I always hoped they would bridge to DAS to NAS but they never did.
BTW my Mini always had a bit of an issue on restart with the power rails which it why it’s in pieces in a box on the repair bench waiting for time for me to have a look at it.
I have had my Drobo 5N since the model came out. I have never had a failure that took out my data. Several drives have failed, but in each case, they were RMA'ed back to Western Digital and I received bright and shiny replacement drives. Yesterday I replaced the five hard drives with five Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB drives and I am joyful in anticipation. This upgrade removes the last spinning iron in this establishment. My computer has 6 Terabytes of Gen4 NVMe SSD on the motherboard and 3 Terabytes more on SATA, not counting the Drobo. Things have really sped up around here. I hardly have time to go make a cup of coffee any more. I have really enjoyed the easygoing user interface. Light turns red, pop in a new drive. I am sure there are valid criticisms of the line, but overall I was treated well for my investment. I have no complaints. My unit will probably last as long as I want to keep using computers, which might only be another twenty years or so.
A brief word about Nexsan, the StorCentric-owned NAS manufacturer that is not Drobo. That company appears to be a survivor, and it looks as if it's taking charge of the client-server backup software company. Nexsan doesn't have the same marketing target that Drobo had:
For over 20 years Nexsan has built a reputation for highly reliable,
cost-effective storage designed to serve specific use cases and business
demands. Nexsan products are “purpose-built” rather than built for
general purpose. That means product design starts by understanding the
diverse workloads in customers’ environments. IT professionals can
depend on Nexsan for cost-effective block storage for backup, databases
or Exchange, scalable and highly flexible NAS file systems or secure
archiving. Purpose-built storage with innovation that matters,
reliability, and pricing to fit constrained budgets. Nexsan has a
solution for you.
The reason Nexsan seems to be taking charge of Retrospect "Inc." is that the Retrospect software is incorporated in two of its product lines.
As for the first product line, the high-end Nexsan Unity's
object-based storage uses MinIO. MinIO
provides an open-source, scalable storage service for secure on-premise
data protection on a Nexsan Unity system. With its Object Lock
capabilities, MinIO enables customers to lock specific files for a
retention period, such that no one, not even the root user on the
account, can delete the files until the time has passed.
... Retrospect integrates seamlessly with this new object
lock feature. Users can set a retention period for backups stored on
supporting cloud platforms. Within this immutable retention period,
backups cannot be deleted by any user, even if ransomware or a malicious
actor acquires the root credentials. Retrospect’s powerful
policy-based scheduling allows it to predict when those backups will
leave the retention policy and protect any files that will no longer be
retained, ensuring businesses always have point-in-time backups to
restore within the immutable retention policy window.
AFAIK, the addition of Object Lock to MiniO was actually done by a Missouri-based marketer of the Retrospect software.
As for the second Nexsan product line—the lower-end Nexsan EZ-NAS,
StorCentric®,
a data-centric security company, offering a comprehensive portfolio of
secure data management solutions, today announced the general
availability (GA) launch of Nexsan EZ-NAS, network attached storage
(NAS). Featuring an easy to configure 1U form factor and four drives
with up to 72 TB of raw capacity and 1.5 GB/s of throughput, the new
EZ-NAS array is ideal for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) and
large enterprises’ edge deployments.
The Nexsan EZ-NAS platform delivers advanced enterprise-class features
such as in-line compression, AD support and data-at-rest encryption.
EZ-NAS also comes with the Retrospect software for optional
add-on services, including data backup, cloud connector and ransomware anomaly detection.
Comments
My Gen1 is still running in the corner for my local work data and has been running well for I think it must be 15 years now. I actually travelled overseas with that unit on assignment and it even survived airline baggage.
I will admit I do dismantle, clean, grease and service them myself every year and bought a few replacement fans (my 5D was always noisy and running warm - when I pulled it apart the first time I noticed the fan was installed backwards once that was fixed it was a trooper).
They had the NAS to NAS backup which I always hoped they would bridge to DAS to NAS but they never did.
BTW my Mini always had a bit of an issue on restart with the power rails which it why it’s in pieces in a box on the repair bench waiting for time for me to have a look at it.
The reason Nexsan seems to be taking charge of Retrospect "Inc." is that the Retrospect software is incorporated in two of its product lines.
As for the first product line, the high-end Nexsan Unity's
AFAIK, the addition of Object Lock to MiniO was actually done by a Missouri-based marketer of the Retrospect software.
As for the second Nexsan product line—the lower-end Nexsan EZ-NAS,