It’s pretty common knowledge that you can supply your own drive with your Drobo. You can mix and match capacities and manufactures. But often times, the type of drive you select can have a big impact on the performance of your Drobo.

How do you know which drive to choose? That’s an excellent question. It really depends on your particular use case. For example, virtualized environments require Enterprise SAS Drives for optimal performance. Photographers however are going to want Performance SATA drives to serve their high-end media application needs.

Below are some tips to show the different categories of drives and their recommended use cases.

Low Cost SATA Drives:

• Low performance task such as file storage
• Lower power consumption
• Examples are WD Caviar Green

Performance SATA Drives:

• Photo, video editing or any high end media applications
• Backup jobs
• Examples are WD Caviar Black

Enterprise SATA Drives:

• SMB that needs archival storage or backup
• Offers high capacity at lower cost
• Examples are Seagate Constellation CS, ES (SATA)

Enterprise SAS Drives:

• Virtualized environments, including backup and replication
• Microsoft Exchange, SQL Database, and mixed loads
• Examples are Seagate Constellation ES.2 (SAS), WD RE (SAS)

Visit our choose your drive page for further information.

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Regardless of how many Drobos you have within your infrastructure or how they are set up on the network, it’s easy to manage all of them through the Drobo Dashboard. The Drobo Dashboard is set up to work with both OS X and Windows operating environments, and is designed to handle all aspects of your storage system—from management of your Drobos, to provisioning storage, to mapping devices to their hosts, regardless of the interface.

Drobo Dashboard will go out on the network and automatically detect all Drobos available to be managed. For remote devices, like those in data centers across a VPN connection, they must be set up once by entering an IP address. After that they will show up alongside the other auto-detected Drobos.

Each time the Drobo Dashboard is started, the initial screen provides an overview of the status and condition of all Drobos within the infrastructure. Since everything is light- and color-based in Drobo—red, yellow, and green lights—you will see instantly if all devices are in a consistent state, and if not, what issues exist on a particular unit. You can also call up menus that tell you the capacity and usage level of each unit, what volumes are configured and allocated, and you can set your preferences.

By clicking on a particular Drobo, you can work specifically with that one device. When you first select a particular Drobo, it will present an overview screen similar to the main Drobo Dashboard, showing device status and condition, including percent utilization. However, at the device level, a series of submenus or subsystems will be accessible that let you look deeper into the specifics of the unit. For network units, like the Drobo B800i and B1200i, you’ll be able to check things like the power supplies, performance metrics, and preferences, along with other key parameters.

One particular setting that must be configured before you can utilize any Drobo in a network environment is its IP address information. This must be done through Drobo Dashboard. By selecting the Settings tab of any device, you can enter an IP address and configure each port on your Drobo for failover (for redundancy), multi-pathing (to use the combined throughput of the ports) or even jumbo frames (to get higher throughput). Once the addresses are configured, you can begin provisioning volumes and working with the unit.

Drobo Dashboard also helps you manage your notifications and alerts. With Drobo, there are three ways to manage and receive alert notifications—visually, through the Dashboard, and via email. The red/yellow/green light scheme gives anyone inspecting the unit a visual indication of whether there is a problem with a particular Drobo that must be addressed. Also, for any host that has Drobo Dashboard installed and has visibility into the network, alerts will pop up in the corner of the screen when a problem exists with one of the units. Finally, email alerts can be configured in the Preferences tab that will send a message to the IT administrator or network management software anytime an alert is triggered.

With Drobo, it’s just that simple to get things set up. For more information about the Drobo Dashboard and Drobo products, go to www.drobo.com.

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Nicholas “Cal” Caldrone of MacSources.com recently did a great review of the Drobo 5N network-attached storage device. In fact, the review tagline is “Professional Data Storage Solution at a Personal Price.” He also gave it 5-star ratings for both design and ease of use. So, what is it about the smallest of the network-attached Drobos that impressed Cal so much? You’re about to find out.

Cal has been a Drobo user since 2009, when a traditional direct-attached hard drive failed on him and lost over 500GB of storage. He has been using USB and FireWire direct-attached Drobos ever since. However, Cal’s needs changed as he juggled between several iMacs and several Drobos. He needed all this data in one place, something that was network attached. Fortunately with the new Drobo 5N, network storage can be had for under $600, plus the 2TB drives he bought at a major electronics chain.

Ease of use is one of the features that keep Cal coming back to Drobo. His setup consisted of plugging it into both the power and the network, inserting the 5 2TB drives, and launching the Drobo Dashboard. From there, it was a matter of formatting the drives and picking single or dual drive redundancy. The Drobo took care of the rest. That’s the beauty of Drobo’s BeyondRAID technology. The 5N was then ready to have the files transferred over from the old DAS Drobo. Once the transfer was complete and Cal set up some user accounts to determine who gets access to what data, any authorized personnel could access the data from any computer attached to the network.

One common misconception is that network storage is slow. Cal debunks that myth right off the bat. With the gigabit Ethernet, the Drobo 5N is faster than his previous direct-attached Drobo. If you want to make the Drobo even faster, it features an mSATA SSD port and data-aware tiering. It will use that little SSD to speed up access to your files. There’s no need to even reformat when using the mSATA.

With Drobo 5N, you can have single or dual redundancy in an easy-to-use NAS device that is extremely efficient, but what happens if the power goes out? Is it still safe? Oh yes it is! Completely unheard of in this device class, the 5N has its own internal battery backup. The Drobo will automatically transfer your data from temporary storage to safe and secure places on the drive before it shuts down. The rechargeable battery has enough charge to safely shut down, and will not need replacement over the life of the system. You don’t have to worry about it; just be thankful it’s there when you need it.

Cal says the Drobo 5N is one of the best investments he has ever made, and he definitely recommends it to others. With the Drobo 5N, powerful network-attached storage is available to everyone. To learn more about our complete line of Drobos, please go to Drobo.com.

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One of the most common misconceptions when comparing protected storage devices is that RAID is an interoperable standard. George Crump with Storage Swiss recently wrote an excellent article on Demystifiying RAID levels. In that article, he wrote:

“At the heart of the assumption that proprietary RAID is bad is the implication that these solutions somehow lock the organization into a particular vendor. That is true. But the real truth is that ALL RAID solutions lock the organization into a particular vendor. There is no way to physically move a four-drive set of RAID 5 disks from vendor A’s to vendor B’s storage system”

BeyondRAID™ technology was created to offer additional flexibility and expandability that is not possible with standard RAID levels. Through the use of thin provisioning, instant expansion, and the ability to change RAID levels on the fly, Drobo offers flexibility not available in any other RAID system.

While Drobo offers a simple upgrade path by means of upsizing disks, if the hardware fails there may also be a direct upgrade to a current model. Unlike other vendors that require replacement with the same device, Drobo users can migrate their existing disk pack to a current model in their same product class while retaining all data. For example, users with a 4-bay that is several years old can directly migrate their disks to Drobo 5D, thereby taking advantage of internal battery backup, Thunderbolt connectivity, and SSD tiering.

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Drobo

Our case studies are typically posted on Drobo Reviews, but we thought the readers of our main blog would enjoy this too:

If your life’s work is stored digitally on a server, you need a backup system you know won’t fail. Seth Resnick, owner of Seth Resnick Photography, found that Drobo meets the challenge. Not only does his system of dual Drobos ensure access to his database of over 100,000 images, it does it cheaper and better than other systems.

Seth, a professional still photographer for more than 35 years, keeps his collection of images on a server running Lightroom Database as well as a customized FileMaker database. He needs quick and guaranteed access to those images, which  he licenses through some of the most prominent names in the business.

Before adopting Drobo, Seth used tape to back up the four internal 4TB drives in his server. Now he backs up everything digitally to an 8-bay Drobo. In addition to the protection against multi-drive failures, Seth wanted even more protection. So he backs his first Drobo up to a second Drobo.

Needless to say, Drobo’s mix-and-match drive compatibility was a selling point. He also liked the simplicity of use and instant expansion Drobos offer. But Drobo wasn’t his first solution, and it almost wasn’t his last.

“I tried NETGEAR [ReadyNAS Pro] and was very unhappy with both speed and reliability,” Seth said. “I came very close to buying an Apple Xserve—which would have cost more than $15,000—and decided to try a Drobo while it was still in early Beta. I was thrilled, and I haven’t looked back since. My Drobos have been 100% reliable and serve as the core of my multi level backup.”

If you’re using tape to back up critical information, Seth can tell you that Drobo provides an easier, more reliable, and highly affordable alternative.

To learn more about Drobo, request a Drobo for business live demo here and find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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Top 5 Drobo Blogs

Drobo award-winning data storage products provide an unprecedented combination of sophisticated data protection and management features, affordable capacity, and ease-of-use. Based on the patented and proven BeyondRAID™ technology, Drobo’s ability to deliver “Big Storage in a Small Box” creates the best storage experience ever for hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses and individual professionals worldwide, who use it to support their file backup and media archiving, server virtualization, and email application needs.

Here are a few of our top-viewed blog posts:

Music Choice Entrusts Its Backup Audio and Video Files to Drobo

For those who want a real-world example of how a major company is using Drobo products in their business, we’d like to introduce you to Music Choice.  For the past 18 months, Music Choice has been using the Drobo B1200i as second copy backup for more than 200 TB of audio and video data. Drobo now helps them keep high availability and data production while meeting the growing needs of their business.

Music Choice is an integrated music company that specializes in digital music services for consumers.  In fact, it’s one of the largest.  They provide music and music video channels, including hot genres such as Hit List, Hip Hop and R&B, Rock, and Today’s Country to cable and similar service providers.  Their clients include a wide range of cable and other providers in the United States. With clients that demanding, uptime and easy expansion without downtime are essential. (Read more)

Streaming and Sharing All Your Stuff with Drobo and Plex

There is a well-known skit by George Carlin on the topic of “stuff.”  My wife does not think it is very funny, but I find it hilarious.  Apply the topic to our digital world of possessions, and most people reading this have stuff they want to be able to access from all of their devices. Drobo is a great place to keep all of your digital stuff, protecting it from hard drive failure and expanding as your collection of stuff grows.

I was a Drobo owner prior to working at Drobo, and I have my fair share of stuff on my Drobo 5N.  Drobo users have been Plex users for a long time, because it is arguably the best media server application to manage all of your stuff.  For Drobo 5N users, life just got better because Plex now runs on the 5N.  I installed it this morning from Drobo Dashboard, and it was very easy to get my >40,000 photos on my Drobo presented in one spot. (Read more)

Drobo Offers New Application for Expanded Media, Mobile, & Cloud Storage Capabilities

We at Drobo, makers of award-winning storage products for professional and business customers, are announcing a new software platform to enhance the mobile and cloud-connected capabilities of the Drobo 5N and subsequently its customers.  The first two applications we’re integrating are Drobo Copy, a cloud-based data sharing and data protection service from Barracuda Networks, and Plex, the industry’s leading media server for managing and serving digital media (such as video, music, and photos) to nearly any device.  We’re also introducing a development kit developers can use to create applications that further extend the power and simplicity of our new networked-storage device for remote access and share, media streaming, and cloud integration. (Read more)

Drobo Reaches 1 Exabyte Milestone

Drobo’s customers are entrusting our products with a lot of data.  So much data that purchased and deployed Drobo systems have reached the milestone of 1 Exabyte of storage.  To understand how much an Exabyte truly is, let’s put things in perspective.  That’s 1 million 1TB hard drives.  If backed up to 5.25” DVDs, you’d need 245 million of them—which if stacked to the same 5 ½ mile height as Mount Everest would require 32 stacks measuring 14 feet across.  If we didn’t create storage as easy and efficient as Drobo, this Exabyte of individual creativity and business productivity would have been constrained. (Read more)

Which Drobo is Right For You? Easy as 1-2-3?

Three simple questions are all it takes, and we even have an easy tool to help you choose the Drobo that best fits your needs. This tool is one of the most popular features of the site (even more popular than our capacity calculator). We call it the “Product Chooser,” a funny name, but one that clearly identifies what it does: making choosing a Drobo as easy as 1-2-3:

1) How many computers will use your Drobo at the same time?

This will help decide on the best way to connect your Drobo, whether you need a direct-attach Drobo (DAS, or Direct-Attach Storage) for photo or video editing, or a networked shared Drobo (NAS or SAN).  DAS Drobo models connect via the latest Thunderbolt… (Read more)

To learn more about  Drobo for Professionals, register for a Live Demo. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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As you may have recently heard, Drobo and Connected Data have entered into merger discussions.  Currently both companies are involved in a 30-day due diligence process. 

Please rest assured that as valued Drobo partners and customers, our relationship with you will remain unchanged and business will continue as usual during the due diligence period.

If you have questions regarding your Drobo product,  give us a call at 1 (866) 426 4280. If you are a partner and have questions regarding our partner program, give us a call at 1 (866) 560 6466.

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Drobo Plex App

There is a well-known skit by George Carlin on the topic of “stuff”.  My wife does not think it is very funny, but I find it hilarious.  Apply the topic to our digital world of possessions, and most people reading this have stuff they want to be able to access from all of their devices.  Drobo is a great place to keep all of your digital stuff, protecting it from hard drive failure and expanding as your collection of stuff grows.

I was a Drobo owner prior to working at Drobo, and I have my fair share of stuff on my Drobo 5N.  Drobo users have been Plex users for a long time, because it is arguably the best media server application to manage all of your stuff.  For Drobo 5N users, life just got better because Plex now runs on the 5N.  I installed it this morning from Drobo Dashboard, and it was very easy to get my >40,000 photos on my Drobo presented in one spot.

Where am I going to stream my stuff?  I have a Roku on one of the TVs, two Samsung SmartTVs, plus an iPad, 2 x iPhones, a Samsung Galaxy S3.  The MacBook Air and Acer Windows 8 Ultrabook could get in the mix too, I have plenty of stuff to go around.  And with practically unlimited expansion on my Drobo, Plex might just be the thing that gets me to consolidate the hundreds of DVDs from my wife’s collection.

The new Plex app for the Drobo 5N is available today through Drobo Dashboard version 2.5.2 or later.  Could not be easier to install, like an app from any app store.  If you don’t have a Drobo 5N yet, learn more about the joint solution @ drobo.com/plex, were you can find the how-to guide on running Plex with any other Drobos you might have.

To learn more about  Drobo for Professionals, register for a Live Demo. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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Drobo’s innovative line of data storage devices is finding favor in a huge way with multimedia production studios, video producers and moviemakers alike as they discover the fast, reliable, intuitive, and scalable storage capabilities available with these systems. Over 10,000 registered users of Drobo storage products say they’re involved with the video and film production professions in some capacity, making them the one of the fastest-growing segments of users reaping the many benefits offered by Drobo storage devices. The range of storage solutions used by these professionals runs the gamut, from the Drobo Mini to the 1200i iSCSI.

The professional media and entertainment industry is experiencing a technology wave led by HD video, higher-quality codecs, increased graphics usage, larger digital images, and tapeless acquisition. The result has been an accelerated demand for advanced storage capabilities and astronomical capacities, and Drobo has responded with innovative solutions that include faster, modern connectivity options such as USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, internal battery backup, and the ability to accommodate SSD flash storage media in addition to traditional HDD devices. These professionals understand the devastating effects data loss would have on their individual businesses, and are leveraging Drobo’s BeyondRAID technology to circumvent drive failures that otherwise would have been catastrophic.

Catherine Miller of HNH Multimedia Productions, LLC—developers of interactive storytelling through CD-ROMs, films, commercials, and websites—says her company has been using Drobo products for over three years in their full-service multimedia production studios. She particularly likes the fact that Drobo products are easy to set up and use. She says she has neither the time nor the desire to become a storage and technology expert, and likes the fact that Drobo products take care of that concern for her, providing peace-of-mind and reliability along the way.

RHED Pixel is a video production company that specializes in high definition video production for public service announcements, documentaries, educational pieces, and other broadcast video. CEO  Rich Harrington says his company has been using Drobo since its products have evolved to meet the needs of the film and video industry. Drobo units are deployed as the primary backup, storage, and archive devices for RHED Pixel, handling terabytes of irreplaceable data daily for editing and graphics systems. Harrington says that every computer in the house, including those that are used the field, is connected to a Drobo. They find that the Drobo Mini is particularly valuable as a portable device for field data collection, reliably capturing and holding the data until it is brought back to the studio to be transferred to larger Drobo storage units.

Drobo has been listening and responding to the needs of video and filmmaking professionals, and the result has been widespread adoption of its products within the industry. The modern, high-speed connections, ease of use, scalability, and reliability of Drobo storage solutions has made them a hit with the industry, as proved by the rapid adoption within the profession.

See how the line of innovative Drobo solutions can help you solve your most demanding data storage and protection needs today!

To learn more about  Drobo for Business, register for a Live Demo. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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Drobo Performance

If you’re like me, you like to “test-drive” something before you buy it—and that goes way beyond cars and electronic devices (e.g. wine!).

With Drobo, we’ve found that a “test-drive” makes all the difference in the world—folks get a lot more clarity on how Drobo performance works, how it might be able to fit (or not) for what they are trying to do, and it also helps stimulate questions that people would like answered before they click “buy.” All good reasons to test-drive a Drobo.

Wish we could send you a brand-spanking-new Drobo to test-drive, but that would be a bit cumbersome. So we’ve set up a free virtual test-drive that lets you experience how Drobo performance works, take the controls if you’d like, see performance benchmarks, and ask all the questions you want (our Drobo Geniuses are standing by to answer Drobo-specific questions or whatever other storage stuff you throw at them).

Many of you have already taken advantage of these demos, but others have not checked it out. A free Drobo performance test-drive means lots more info for you. See how it works. See if it works for you. Play “stump the Drobo guy” … whatever helps you.  Free, no risk, no commitment, available every day.

Click here to sign up for your test-drive now. I’d love to hear your feedback. Contact me at tom@drobo.com or 408-276-8621.

Thanks!

Tom

To learn more about  Drobo for Business, register for a Live Demo. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+.

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