Data Robotics pulls two new Drobo models out of the hat just in time for the holidays
When I got the call about a week ago from Mark Fuccio Sr. Director Products & Markets about some new products that Drobo was about to announce, I must say I was not too surprised. In my book they have been consistently setting the bar higher for themselves when it comes to backup storage, and beyond raid solutions. For full disclosure purposes I need to say that Drobo has been an advertiser on the show in the past, however currently I have not financial agreement with Drobo.
Data Robotics yesterday announced the new Drobo S and Drobo Elite models to take the already highly successful Drobos to the next step. These new models give us more storage, faster performance, and even more security.
The new Drobo S kicks it up up a notch and introduces a solution for the Small Office \ Home Office (SoHo) market as well as creative professionals. With more storage capacity and faster speeds this will be a great solutions for anyone wants a faster Drobo then past consumer\prosumer offerings
To me the big deal about the Drobo S is eSATA connectivity. This will provide faster speeds and give even more flexibly for those who want more than just a FireWire 800 ports and a USB 2.0 port. In addition the Drobo S has another trick up it’s hard drive sleeve. There is an additional drive bay making that a total of five (5) versus the consumer model which offers four (4). This will give you up to 10TB of storage (if you use five 2TB drives).
In my discussion with Mark we spoke about what this speed bump means. Data Robotics claims that the Drobo S is 50 percent faster than the current four drive Drobo, while offering 90 percent of the performance of the Drobo Pro. I don’t have a Drobo S review unit to test right now, but I did just get a Drobo Pro review unit which I will review on the podcast in December.
If the claim that the Drobo S will offer 90 percent of the performance a Drobo Pro is true, then the Drobo S should be a screamer. According to Data Robotics they say averages of about 80 megabytes per second with the Drobo S . Can you say wow?
One of the features discussed in my press briefing was the “Data scrubbing” feature. This enables the drive to read every block of data and repair any data corruption it finds. This self-healing magic is just what a small business owner or a creative professional needs to ensure that their data is safe. If that’s not enough for you, the Drobo S also adds dual drive redundancy. This means that if two drives fail, you’re still covered.
Data Robotics announced another product yesterday for the small or middle size business that is bound to shake things up in IT budgets for 2010. The Drobo Elite, provides multi-host support with LUN affinity for consolidating storage across multiple servers.
They have added an additional dual gigabit ethernet ports which will provide additional reliability and throughput. The new Drobo Elite also works with multiple workstations, enabling the use of Drobo at the same time.
The Drobo Elite has a faster processor than the Drobo Pro, and offers an eight drive capacity with single or dual drive redundancy. This means the Drobo Elite can have a storage capacity of up to 16TB.
The Drobo S without drives is priced at $799; but can be bought with five 2TB drives for $1799. The Drobo Elite in its basic configuration sells for $3499; but if you want it ready to work out of the box you can pick it up with 8, 2TB drives, it’s $5899. Here is a link to the full Drobo line of products.
The Drobo brand in my opinion continues to lead the way in making solutions for consumers, creatives and small businesses. They won’t break the bank when compared to their peers in traditional “Raid” or “Sans” solutions, but they do offer up a real alternative for these market segments. . For more information visit Data Robotics.
