Drobo Storage Solution @ Team

Don’t Think RAID, Think BeyondRAID: RAID has a high learning curve with many options, levels, and unfamiliar terminology like striping, mirroring, and parity. Think Drobo.

With Beyond RAID Drobo allows Photographers and Videographers to do what you do best: Take photo and shoot videos without worrying about how to store or backup your data. Drobo’s system works out what is the best RAID for your requirement based upon your data and storage capacity. With Drobo you can start with the storage capacity you need and scale it up as your requirements change. All hard drives will eventually fail; Drobo protects your assets by storing data redundantly across multiple hard drives. Drobos come in NAS and DAS options – DAS is a direct connection whereas NAS is a Network connection. Your choice between DAS & NAS depends on your needs. DAS Solutions are faster but only offer one computer connection, whereas NAS is capable of networking between a number of computers.

Let’s have a look at some of our popular Drobos:

Drobo C:  5-bay, USB C, DAS. Up to 10Gb Transmission, Single or Dual Disk Redundancy. Supports both 3.5″ HDD and 2.5″ HDD & SSD products.

Drobo D3:  5-bay, Thunderbolt 3, DAS. Up to 40Gb Transmission, Single or Dual Disk Redundancy. Supports both 3.5″ HDD and 2.5″ HDD & SSD products.

Drobo N2: 5-bay, NAS. 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, Single or Dual Disk Redundancy. Supports both 3.5″ HDD and 2.5″ HDD & SSD products.

Drobo 8D: 8-bay, Thunderbolt 3, DAS. Up to 40Gb Transmission, Single or Dual Disk Redundancy. Supports both 3.5″ HDD and 2.5″ HDD & SSD products.

Drobo B810n: 8-bay, NAS. 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, Single or Dual Disk Redundancy. Supports both 3.5″ HDD and 2.5″ HDD & SSD products.

SSD Accelerated Performance

The B810n was designed to provide all users with uniform performance. Add two SSD’s and you can accelerate performance for all simultaneous users. New technology uses two techniques to accelerate access to your data:

• Data Tiering: as transactional data (small pieces of data) is read or written it is placed in SSD storage. Subsequent reads or writes to these blocks are almost instantaneous as there is no delay induced by a hard drive’s magnetic head having to move into position. Active, or “hot” data, is stored in an SSD tier of storage. As it cools, i.e. access decreases, the B810n will move the data to the hard drive tier.
• Hot Data Cache: this is a technique to accelerate data reads. As data is read from hard drives, the B810n will prefetch nearby data that it predicts will be also be read. Your benefit is faster access and less waiting.

Dual Ethernet Ports: Bond Together, or Failover

The B810n has dual Gigabit Ethernet ports. These can be bonded together to provide approximately twice the read/write performance you get via a single port. Or they can be used to provide a connection to two different subnets. Furthermore, they can be used in an “active/passive” mode so that if one port fails the other takes over.

Protecting Your Critical Data from Power Loss

Drobo protects your data from loss in the event of a sudden power outage. This protects directory structures ensuring Drobo will remount on your computer. Drobo has a battery inside that powers RAM memory. When there is a power outage, data is stored on internal flash-based nonvolatile storage. Your data is safe until power returns. The battery recharges itself and lasts for the life of the product.

If you don’t want to have to ponder the best RAID solution for you, Team Digital have been selling and supporting the Drobo range for over 10 years. We have found it a scalable and reliable system. In fact, Team Digital run the Drobo system for our own storage/back up needs, and our resident Drobo Expert Trevor understands the system better than anyone in WA. If you want to see what a Drobo solution can do for you or your business, contact Trevor. He not only runs his own Drobo system but has also installed anything from 5-bay to 8-bay solutions. Whatever your needs are Trevor will be able to tailor a system to suit.

Your Storage Survey

If you’re not sure what storage solution is best for your needs, we have a small survey you can fill in and we’ll organise a free consultation.

Click here to download the Storage Survey.