Storage arrays aren't exactly known for their good looks, but with its shiny black casing the DroboPro is nothing like your average array. Neither is it as complicated to setup or manage, with built-in intelligence to do most of the hard work for you.

About the same size as network switch, the DroboPro can be rack mounted using brackets that attach to either side, but you don't have to as it's smart enough to simply sit on a desk. Added to which it's incredibly quiet, with a couple of barely audible fans and an integrated power supply.

Unfortunately, like other storage arrays it's not cheap and, if you go for the base model, all you get is a bare enclosure with slots for up to eight hard disks which need to be sourced separately. However, that's not as bad as it sounds, as no tools or special carriers are required to add new drives; simply remove the front cover and slide the bare disks in place. More than that, you don't have to worry about who made the disks, their spin speed or their capacity.

In fact virtually any 3.5-inch drive with a SATA interface can be used and you can mix and match capacities in any combination you like. We merely slotted in a few we had lying around, the DroboPro automatically wiping them and adding each to a pool of available storage from which it's possible to configure up to 16 virtual “Smart Volumes” each of up to 16TB in size, using the dashboard software supplied.

But just a minute! With slots for only eight SATA disks and a maximum capacity, at present, of just 2TB per disk, surely that means no more than 16TB altogether. So, how can you configure sixteen times that amount?

The answer is thin provisioning, the DroboPro allocating storage to the Smart Volumes only as it's needed to accommodate real data. Of course you could eventually run out of space, but when larger disks become available all you have to do is remove one of the old drives and plug in a newer, larger model.

Do that and the storage pool is automatically increased in size and any data on the old drive moved onto the new one. Likewise, if one of the disks develops a fault you can simply swap it for a new one and carry on, just like on a conventional storage array. Unlike other arrays, however, you never have to get your hands dirty defining the type of RAID technology needed to deliver this kind of resiliency. It's all done by the built-in BeyondRAID technology which works out what to configure based on the number of disks you install and their capacities.

There is one “techie” decision you have to make, and that's whether or not to turn on dual disk redundancy, to protect your data even if two disks fail at the same time. You'll need three or more disks before you can do this and you will lose some storage space as a result, but it does provide extra belt and braces redundancy.

Accessing the storage on the DroboPro is pretty easy too, with, round at the back, a choice of USB and FireWire interfaces for direct connection to Windows or Apple Mac workstations. There's also a Gigabit Ethernet interface but, somewhat surprisingly, the DroboPro can't be used as a NAS (Network Attached Storage) appliance. Instead it supports the iSCSI protocol, enabling storage to be shared at the block level on an Ethernet SAN (Storage Area Network).

And even that's easy to do, with no extra configuration required for iSCSI, plus support for Microsoft's initiator on Windows networks and a custom initiator for use with Apple OS X.

We were impressed. Indeed the only thing we didn't like was the price tag. But look around and you'll find it's cheaper than a lot of other iSCSI storage arrays and about the same as a comparable NAS appliance. It compares well with similarly priced solutions in terms of performance, too, although the USB port is best avoided and you can't use the USB ports to take backups to an external disk, although the DroboPro can be used to take backups of other systems.

The really big selling point, however, has to be ease of use. The DroboPro really does take just a few minutes to get working, and you can plug in more or less any disk you like, whenever you want and still access your data. Disk failures don't faze it, simple traffic light LEDs let you know when it's getting full, and most of the time it just gets on and manages itself.

Verdict
The DroboPro takes all the hard work out of configuring and managing a storage array and can take a mix of ordinary SATA disks in any combination of spin speed and capacity. Simply add extra disks or swap to larger drives as needed, and connect to the appliance directly or share it on an iSCSI SAN. It's easy, looks after itself and just works.

Company: Data Robotics

Contact: 00 1 866 997 6268

Tags: iscsi drobo storage area network network-attached storage universal serial bus ieee 1394 interface non-standard raid levels hardware