Last week Data Robotics, the company behind the Drobo personal data robot, announced their new product: The DroboPro
Like the current Drobo it’s a shiny black box that will fit any kind of 3,5” SATA disk you fit into it and create a virtual storage volume using up as much space as possible while keeping all your data save from loss due to disk failure. The improvements are mainly found inside the box. The Pro fits 8 instead of only 4 SATA disks, reduced noise by utilizing two bigger fans on the back and sports a 1Gb/s Ethernet port that’s dedicated to using iSCSI.
This means you can now hook the DroboPro to any Ethernet port you have and connect it to your your computer via iSCSI. The only requirement is that your computer has to have a second Ethernet port, that you can configure to only use the iSCSI protocol. This will give you read/write speeds up to 100 MB/s on the Drobo disks.
This all sounds great, so where’s the catch?
The DroboPro will start at $1299. If you a small business and want to include the DroboPro into your server rack, there’s a rack mounting kit available, for another $150. If you want to add 8 reliable 1TB hard drives, this will be another $800.
$2200 isn’t that much for a SMB storage solution, but there are some things about the DroboPro that bother me more than the price.
1. The device is marketed as an SMB solution with rack mounting capabilities, but it’s only 12” wide and 3U high, so there’s 7” of wasted space. Usually a 19” 3U NAS has space for 12 3,5” or 24 2,5” disks, the DroboPro only fits 8 3,5” SATA disks. The DroboPro is totally single device, so there’s no way of extending, combining multiple DroboPro to act as a single device. This is bad news for everyone that needs to scale beyond the current 16TB barrier or 8 disk limitations.
2. The rack mounting kit adds another $150 to the DroboPro price tag while it’s included for free with most competitor’s devices. I’m not absolutely sure what exactly is worth $150 from the pictures, but for a mere metal mounting plate with plastic clip-ons it’s way over top.
3. The DroboPro only has a single power supply. I’m not sure about Data Robotics or you, but I like my power supplies redundant, just in case one of them fails. Imagine you company unable to work because the DroboPro’s power supply is broken and you have no ways to access your 16TB of files until the replacement DroboPro has arrived.
4. Security: The device itself cannot be locked. The only theft prevention is a Kensington lock connector on the back and the disks can easily be placed into another DroboPro. So, if you want to prevent a massive data theft, you’ll have to lock the DroboPro itself into a rack or shelf.
To answer a few of my questions I attended a webcast on Thursday in hope that some of my doubts might be addressed. Instead of the expected product presentation for SMB customers it turned out to be a “for dummies” presentation. The host took unnecessary lengths to explain the different RAID systems (limited to 1, 5 & 6) and why Drobo’s “Beyond RAID” was much superior to them.
With the info I currently have, “Beyond RAID” is a simple JBOD with a virtual storage volume file on it. The controller takes care of the data redundancy on the physical disks, so a single or dual (on a DroboPro) disk failure won’t lead to any data loss. Although this is a kind of storage virtualization, it’s not nearly as sophisticated as a professional storage systems or Data Robotics marketing would like to make you believe.
Just as I expected from the setup of the webcast, none of my questions where answered.
But for whom is this DroboPro really made?
Data Robotics says it’s for professionals and small businesses that need fast high capacity storage. what they didn’t mention or answer is what a small business is for them. I’ve been in the industry for a few years now, and one thing I know is that every product vendor has it’s own definition of the SMB market. The range of defined SMB company sizes varies from 1-100 to 100-10,000. For the DroboPro my guess would be more in the 1-100 employee range.
These are companies that in most cases only have one or a part time administrator with limited knowledge. No offence, but I met a lot of them and you usually only get what you pay for.
If you’re one of these businesses and don’t care if your file services go offline for days in case of failure, go an buy one. It’ll be much better than any NAS of fileserver you might currently have. Just make sure it’s not placed on the Administrator’s table, secured with a Kensington lock.
Should your company approach IT services in a more professional way, the DroboPro might not be your first choice. The missing power redundancy, limited scalability will drive you into a dead lock sooner or later and lack of device security could be a serious compliance issue.
If you’re a professional working with large quantities of data like music, photos or videos this could be a rather price worthy, flexible and fast solution for you.
In case You’re only looking for a easy way to store data and need neither iSCSI nor more than 16TB of space get a “normal” Drobo. Even if you only have a PC without FireWire 800. there are plenty of FireWire Cards for your PCI Express slot, that give you faster access than USB 2.0 does.