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  5. Drobo Elite - Ready For The Server Room If Not The Data Center: Page 2 of 2
Data Centers

Drobo Elite - Ready For The Server Room If Not The Data Center: Page 2 of 2

Ever since Data Robotics came out with the Drobo it's been the darling of some in the storage blogosphere. While I found the original 4-slot Drobo cute, I didn't understand why serious storage guys like Curtis Preston and my friend Stephen Foskett were so excited about a consumer product. The Drobo Pro, an 8-port DAS array with an iSCSI interface didn't make any more sense. The new Drobo Elite on the other hand seems like a great first SAN array for the SMB market.
Howard Marks
November 24, 2009

The 8-drive Drobo Elite has 2Gb Ethernet ports for iSCSI connectivity and can support up to 255 thinly provisioned volumes. You can even rack mount it. Unlike most thin provisioning systems, it's file system aware for NTFS, VMFS, EXT3 and HFS+, which allows it to return space from deleted files to the free pool. Given how NTFS uses free space before overwriting deleted files over time, this can make a big difference on Windows servers.

With an MSRP of just $3500 (and under $6,000 with 8 2TB drives for 12TB of usable space), the Drobo Elite could be the right answer for many SMBs. Buy it full of 500GB drives and upgrade one at a time when you need space. Of course performance is an open question. Data Robotics claims it does 150-170MB/s throughput, but IOPS are where the rubber meets the road.  I'm hoping to get one in the lab soon.

Disclaimer:  I'm doing work for Symantec.  I hope they don't notice I said a Drobo can something better than Storage Foundation.  Please don't tell.

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