Topic: Drobo Network Storage Device (ReadyNAS, RAID)

[spott]

I saw this today, looks like a software RAID device of some type? It's cheaper than the ReadyNAS but I'm wondering how reliable this thing is... has anyone seen this type of device before? 


http://www.drobo.com/products.aspx

Fully automated storage you don't have to manage.

As rich media (photos, video, movies, music) continues to devour your storage capacity, you need a solution that allows you to easily manage, protect, and scale storage for your PC or Mac. For you, we've created Drobo, the first fully-automated storage robot to take the pain out of keeping your important digital content safe.

Drobo guards everything on it. Drobo combines up to four hard drives into a big pool of protected storage. Start with two, grow to four, then upsize smaller drives-get Terabytes of protection.

Drobo manages storage, so you don't have to. Just connect Drobo to your Mac or PC. No RAID levels. No management or configuration. Drobo does everything for you. Get rid of multiple external drives. Avoid the complexity of RAID. Attach a Drobo storage robot to your system and let it manage your storage so you don't have to.

Drobo upgrades capacity on-the-fly. Add drives to Drobo at any time. Mix 'n match capacities, brands or speeds. No downtime, data migration, or waiting to access new capacity. Drobo works the way you do.

Drobo lets you "pay as you grow" Hard drives get bigger and cheaper all the time. Don't buy storage capacity until you need it. Buy capacity "just-in-time" possibly saving you hundreds of dollars.

[Nicola Fankhauser]

hi

seems to be a neat appliance. however I'd shy away from it until more details about the used OS inside this thing rules out windows (in whatever form). if I'd have to build such a thing, I'd take linux' LVM to achieve online capacity and drive changes. don't know what's used here, though. no info on their website about what's running it. like buying a car without knowing what's under the hood. unpleasant...

for the end user more serious is their attitude towards backup: if you want it, do it yourself. I expect automatic remote-backup via rsync or so from a device like this.

regards
nicola