Drobo - looks interesting

[Ric_]

Just saw Drobo on Automated Home (check out http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1869 ).

 

Take the time to watch the video... it looks rather interesting.

[webman]

Looks good! Doesn't look as if it's networkable though - just USB :|

[Ric_]

@webman: Moon on the stick... that's what you want! You could always plug it in to your PC and share it!

[webman]

Yes, yes it is How did you know? 8)

 

I know... but I keep changing distros and it's not always on I already have a NAS (actually spent all day setting up a new one - after encountering one little problem after the other :x)

[ChrisH]

Yes, yes it is How did you know? 8)

 

I know... but I keep changing distros and it's not always on I already have a NAS (actually spent all day setting up a new one - after encountering one little problem after the other :x)

 

Wasnt using Debian was you?

[webman]

No, just FreeNAS

[Ric_]

But drobo is shiny and has multi-coloured flashing lights!

[webman]

Oh, well in that case I'll order one straight away 8)

[Geoff]

That kicks ass.

[gwendes]

I really, really want one... accepting donations now

[Ben_Stanton]

What if the top 3 drives are 40Gb's and the last drive is a 200gb.

 

I have hit full capacity and the 200Gb drive fails?

[SimpleSi]

I'd assume it would be duplicating the 120GB from the 40GB drives onto the 200GB drive.

 

Then if one fails, 40GB of data would be at risk of only being held on one drive - you could then replace the 40GB failed drive or live at risk that some data was vunerable or offload some files.

 

 

That'd be my guess

 

regards

 

Simon

[Ben_Stanton]

Hmmmmm, not sure about that. What if it was a 300Gb drive that failed. Surely even after compression it couldn't hold 300Gb or data across 3 40Gb drives along with the 40Gb already populated to those drives? Surely it hasn't 100% redundency?

[ajbritton]

Hmmmmm, not sure about that. What if it was a 300Gb drive that failed. Surely even after compression it couldn't hold 300Gb or data across 3 40Gb drives along with the 40Gb already populated to those drives? Surely it hasn't 100% redundency?

 

..or it only lets you store what it CAN keep in a fault tolerant way. So if you give it three tiny drives and one huge one there will be some wasted space on the big drive.

 

There is a little bit more info at drobospace

[webman]

Mirroring RAID with identical drives, can't go wrong

[ajbritton]

More drobo tech info from engadget

[ajbritton]

Hmmm... Does this look familiar?

[Ben_Stanton]

Going through my draw last night and found this in there - so may have a play!

 

http://www.open-e.com/nasxsr/network_attached_storage/?lang=en&product_code=NAS-XSR%20SMB&show=description

[TechMonkey]

Hmmmmm, not sure about that. What if it was a 300Gb drive that failed. Surely even after compression it couldn't hold 300Gb or data across 3 40Gb drives along with the 40Gb already populated to those drives? Surely it hasn't 100% redundency?

Check out http://www.drobo.com/drobolator/ and you can drag drives of varying sizes on to the Drobo and it will show you a graph of usable space, protected space and unprotected space.

Gives some idea of how it works

[CyberNerd]

sounds similar to my linksys NSLU2 which is my home storage device.

It currently holds one 120GB 2.5" laptop drive in a USB caddy (about £7 for the caddy IIRC) but can hold upto 2 USB drives (raided if needed), I only use one drive atm as I rsync to a pc for backup. Probably I'll get another drive at some point as a portable 120GB usb 'pen' drive is pretty cool.

Mine runs debian etch and is used as a webserver, web-based bittorrent, samba server, sftp server for the network (I mount local shares for mp3's etc using sshfs. I don't have any fancy graphs but could probably add them onto the webserver or install webmin, but I can get that from a shell if I want it. It's pretty neat as a low power consumption "server" (100Mhz ARM processor 30MB RAM) for home use - I was thinking about using it as a proxy too - but not sure if it would cope - some even install asterisk or use them as routers with extra usb network/adsl cards!

 

It also has lights, but not blue ones sadly.

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linksys-NSLU2UK-Storage-Link-Drives/dp/B0002ZDQLI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-2671664-3916419?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1176381059&sr=8-1

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Debian/HomePage

[nicholab]

But they do some certified setups for VMware, Hyper-V and Citrix as well as being able to replicate to another site. The stuff they suggest looks very good for School size budgets.