Digital Cameras Ratings: Data Robotics DroboPro 8-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800/iSCSI Storage Array DRPR1A21 Review

Average Reviews:
2.8 out of 5 stars

(More customer reviews)I've heard good feedback on Drobo products but after trying a Drobo Pro we had a lot of problems.The first unit we tested performance was 20-30mb/s with frequent "freeze ups" where it would drop down to 5mb/s.Local storage on this same box gives 130mb/s with single raptor drives.

We got a replacement unit that was completely dysfunctional, it rebooted continuously and was not functional.The third unit a technician received and tested before sending to us.We managed to get 90MB/s out of it for about 5 minutes, then the device dropped down to 60Mb/s on average, still with random drops to 5mb/s (although not nearly as often as first unit but still frequently happens coming out of drive spin down).These tests are with 256K block size, I always test with 32K block size, but when using 32K block size, performance was really low (6-8Mb/s or so).This is tested with 8x Western Digital Black Dual Processor Drives w/ 32MB cache.The tech I spoke to only had odd drives like old 40GB drives to test with and did not have any reasonable performance drives in the lab.

The first device was extremely difficult to use, if for whatever reason you put the unit in standby you can fiddle with it for 15 minutes before it would eventually come online, many times only with a reboot. The new unit seems more reliable in this manor, but still can be quirky.

The software is super easy, and it is really designed to be dummy proof, but not as much for VMWare, Multiple Servers, or anything performance sensitive.It typically performs slower than an average single sata drive.Although they are marketing it for VMWare and corporate environments.A big part of this is due to the 256MB memory on the device, where only 64MB is reserved for write-cache. With capacity of over 8TB, 64Mb isn't going to do anything and using RAID5/6 (they use a priority system, but it is basically raid 5/6) write-cache is critical to having acceptable performance rates. The unit does not support jumbo frames, which is a big concern when using Gbit iSCSI.It seems to perform better with Jumbo frames, but after mixed messages from tech support, we finally were told to turn off Jumbo frames as they are not supported.

All and all it is not a system I could recommend or sell to my clients (the reason we tested the unit) as even using windows software stripping across two USB external drives would perform better, not that I ever used such a configuration, our experience seems to put it in that category.The unit is inexpensive as an iSCI SAN but the performance issues makes it unpractical for use as a SAN.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Data Robotics DroboPro 8-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800/iSCSI Storage Array DRPR1A21

Product Description:
DroboPro is a storage array that manages itself. DroboPro is a rackmountable/desktop eight-drive storage array that protects against two simultaneous drive failures. Capacity expands by adding/replacing drives. DroboPro-s BeyondRAID technology allows mixing different sized drives without sacrificing capacity. Connect to server via iSCSI/FireWire800/USB. It supports up to 16, 16TB volumes (LUNs). Includes iSCSI initiator and backup software.