Drobo FS

Overview:

The revolutionary Drobo FS was designed with one purpose in mind: to deliver the best file sharing experience ever. From the moment you plug it in and see it instantly appear on your desktop, you’ll know there’s nothing like it. The all-in-one Drobo FS is perfect for any connected home, home office, or small office environment needing a simple, safe device for sharing and backing up files over the network.

Like all Drobo storage products, Drobo FS provides redundant data protection without the complexities of RAID. Just plug in your Drobo FS, and your data protection is all set up with no configuration required. We call this BeyondRAID™ technology. You’ll call it peace of mind.

	Share Your Data on a Gigabit Ethernet Network Drobo FS connects directly to a Gigabit Ethernet network to make sharing your data easy. Just plug it into any switch or wireless router and you're ready to go. You can even connect the Drobo FS directly to the Ethernet port on your computer without having to configure any settings.
	Supports the Computer of Your Choice Connect to your Drobo FS using any Windows or Mac computer. Multiple computers can access the Drobo FS at the same time, providing storage to your entire network.
	Easy Expansion to 10TB and Beyond Drobo FS holds up to five drives allowing you to effortlessly grow your storage to meetyour data capacity needs. To add more space, simply insert a new hard drive or replace your smallest drive with a larger one, even when all drive bays are full. And unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology in Drobo FSenablesyou to mix and match drive capacities, brands and speeds. This unprecedented flexibility allows forcontinuous expansion as available hard drive capacities increase. With Drobo FS, expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.
	Backup Your Network Drobo FS is the perfect backup appliance. Use the free DroboCopy utility to create backups for every machine on your network, or use your favorite backup software.
	Protection from up to Two Drive Failures Enable the dual-drive redundancy option to protect your data from failure of up to two hard drives. It's all done with a single click, and without ever losing access to your data. Running out of space? Switch back to single-drive redundancy at any time. Unlike moving between traditional RAID 5 and RAID 6, there's no need to reformat or migrate data from the Drobo FS, potentially saving you hours or days of downtime.
	Self-Healing Technology With the self-healing technology incorporated into Drobo FS, your data is safer than ever. When sitting idle, Drobo FS will proactively examine the blocks and sectors on every drive, flagging questionable areas. This preemptive " scrubbing" helps ensure your data is being written only to the healthy areas of your drives. When a drive fails, Drobo FS keeps your data in the safest state possible by moving your data to the available space on the remaining healthy drives.

Drobo PC Backup
Backing up your PC to your Drobo is as easy as using Drobo with Drobo PC Backup, now bundled with Drobo FS - 3 licenses. PC Backup automatically detects and backs up incremental file changes, ensuring that your data is always protected. Learn more about Drobo PC Backup.

Seamless Integration with Apple Time Machine
The Drobo FS enables network backup for Mac users at home, home office or small offices. The Drobo FS delivers the most seamless support for Apple Time Machine of any network storage system on the market today. Using Time Machine with Drobo FS is as easy as clicking one box in the Drobo Dashboard software, with no need for confusing, complex command line work.

A Drobo as Unique as you Are
Select from a wide selection of free DroboApps designed to give you the freedom to configure and customize your Drobo FS to meet your own unique set of requirements. Our growing library of DroboApps¹ adds amazing functionality like media, web, and more!

¹ DroboApps are community created and community supported applications.

BeyondRAID:

What's BeyondRAID? Storage without limitations.

BeyondRAID technology, built into every Drobo, delivers all of the benefits of traditional RAID, while providing much more and leaving many of the limitations behind. This next-generation of redundant storage technology brings together enhanced protection, reliability, expandability, and ease-of-use.

Drobos, based on BeyondRAID, interact with computing systems in the same manner as storage arrays using traditional RAID, so installing a Drobo allows you to maintain your current operating system and file system. This eliminates the challenges and costs when moving to a new storage technology.

Problems with Traditional RAID
RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) was developed in the 1980s to pool disk drives for increased capacity and reliability for data storage. Since then, RAID has been a huge success, preventing single disk drive failures from causing data loss, and has been used in almost every enterprise data center.

Unfortunately, the complexity of RAID has made it challenging for small businesses and consumers to effectively use the technology. RAID has a high learning curve with many options. There's RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60 along with unfamiliar terminology like striping, mirroring, and parity.

Aside from complexity, these are the primary challenges with traditional RAID:

• Lock-in of RAID levels. To change RAID levels, most storage arrays require the data to be moved off of it, reconfigured, and then moved back on. If you want to move to RAID 6 from RAID 5 for protection against two drive failures, it's a reinitialize and start over.
• Lack of expandability. Once drives are configured into a RAID pool, that is it. If you want to add more storage capacity, the solution is to create a new RAID pool, leaving you with another chunk of storage to manage - or you can just reinitialize and start over.
• Debilitated state after a drive failure. When a drive fails, most RAID implementations enter a state where data loss will occur if another drive falters before the user replaces the failed drive. Also, performance is hampered when in this debilitated state.

Moving Beyond RAID
Drobo's BeyondRAID technology solves these fundamental issues with traditional RAID while delivering much more. Built on an advanced virtualization platform, BeyondRAID chooses the correct protection algorithm based on data availability needs at any given moment.Since the technology works at the block level, it can write blocks of data that alternate between data protection approaches.

If you need to add storage capacity to a Drobo, simply insert additional disk drives or replace the smallest disks with larger ones - no need to change RAID levels, purchase a new storage array or go through the complex administration of pooling RAID groups. The BeyondRAID feature even allows IT managers to switch from single to dual disk redundancy with a single click, thereby ensuring enterprise-level dual parity data protection if required. If a drive happens to fail, Drobo will automatically re-layout the data to return to a protected state without any user interaction.

¹ Available with 5-bay or Larger Drobos
² Available with iSCSI-capable Drobos

Thin Provisioning is a fundamental capability of BeyondRAID, allowing for infinite capacity expansion by just replacing a drive with a larger one.

Instant Expansion occurs when a new, or larger, drive is inserted without any disruption in service.

Drobo's volumes are Smart Volumes, pulling needed storage from a common pool and then returning deleted blocks back to the common pool, preventing free space from being tied up by any particular server.

Mixed Drive Utilization allows you to insert any drive, of any size, or any type, and Drobo will optimally use it - check out our interactive Capacity Calculator.

Automatic Protection Levels ensures the best algorithm is used to protect from drive failure depending on the number of drives that are inserted, without any user configuration. There is no need to learn about RAID levels or what mirroring or striping is.

Dual Disk Redundancy enhances BeyondRAID protection by guarding from multiple drive failures in a short period of time. Even if two drives fail, BeyondRAID will attempt to use the remaining drives to return to a protected state.

Virtual Hot Spare utilizes all drives at all time with no drives sitting idle waiting for one to fail. With some traditional RAID systems, a drive can be marked as a "hot spare", waiting on standby for a drive failure so it can take over. That's just a unutilized drive that you have to pay for taking up a valuable drive bay.

Drobos are Data Aware, intelligently handling data for added resiliency, performance, and management. Being Data Aware allows the Drobo to have a capacity gauge on the front, quickly recover in the event of a drive failure, enable intelligent tiering of data, and much more.

Drive Re-ordering allows Drobo disk packs to be moved to another Drobo, and even re-ordered, while still functioning - try that with RAID.

How BeyondRAID Works
Now that we've looked at how BeyondRAID compares with traditional RAID and the value that it brings, let's see how BeyondRAID works.

The sections of the RAID stack are drastically reinvented in a Drobo—and it all has to
do with how drives are pooled (disk pack) and the way data is stored (BeyondRAID virtualization).

Technology:

BeyondRAID™ Technology
Most modern storage arrays aggregate disks and prevent against single drive failures using a 20-year-old technology called RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). While RAID has served many businesses well, it requires up-front knowledge of its functionality and has many shortcomings. BeyondRAID technology built into every Drobo addresses these shortcomings and makes virtualizing disk drives usable by everyone. BeyondRAID provides these enhancements over traditional RAID:

• Thin Provisioning as a fundamental capability allows for infinite capacity expansion by just replacing a drive with a larger one
• Instant Expansion occurs when a new, or larger, drive is inserted without any disruption in service
• Mixed Drive Utilization allows you to insert any drive, of any size, or any type, and Drobo will optimally use it - check out our interactive Capacity Calculator
• Automatic Protection Levels ensures the best algorithm is used to protect from drive failure depending on the number of drives that are inserted without any user configuration
• Dual Disk Redundancy enhances BeyondRAID protection by guarding from multiple drive failures
• Virtual Hot Spare utilizes all drives at all time - no drives sitting idle waiting for one to fail
• Drobos are Data Aware, intelligently handling data for added resiliency, performance, and management
• Drive Re-ordering allows Drobo disk packs to be moved to another Drobo, and even re-ordered, while still functioning - try that with RAID

Drobo Dashboard Management
Drobo Dashboard is the single tool to centrally manage all of your Drobos. Drobo Dashboard gives you status as if all of your Drobos were right in front of you by providing you the same status lights and capacity guage that are on the front panel. All adminitration tasks are a single click away and there’s even a built-in data protection tool called Drobo Copy to easily copy data to and from your Drobo. Simply, it’s the easiest way to configure and manage business-class storage.

Learn more about Drobo Dashboard.

File and Operating System Agnostic
Drobo and its underlying BeyondRAID technology currently support the Windows and Mac operating systems and files from these systems formatted in NTFS, HFS+, and FAT32. Since Drobo is a block-level system, it easily adapts to almost any environment.

Mixed Drive Capacity Utilization
Grow storage to meet your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard disk or replace the smallest disk with a larger one, even when all four disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology enables IT managers to efficiently mix and match disk brands, capacities, and speeds. This allows for continuous expansion as disk capacities grow. Now, expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.

To find out exactly how much free capacity you'll have with your choice of disk capacities, try out our interactive Capacity Calculator on tab.

Redundant Safety
Drobo can ensure your data is safe even if a hard disk fails. You’ll feel safer knowing that if disks do fail, Drobo automatically enters a state of self-healing wherein it relays out your data across the remaining healthy disks and sectors.

Proportional Rebuild Times
The time it takes Drobo to rebuild data after a drive failure or removal is proportional to the amount of data stored in the pool — meaning the less capacity that is used, even on a 2TB disk, the shorter your rebuild times will be. This is superior to traditional RAID, which lacks proportional rebuild times, and is forced relay out every drive block even if it does not contain user data.

Since Drobo is “Data Aware”, it tracks where data is on each disk, so it can differentiate between used and unused portions of disk. This expedites rebuild times and reduces your risk of losing data to an additional disk failure. In short, your data is safer on a Drobo.

Self-Healing
When Drobo detects a "bad" hard disk, it proactively advises you with a series of warnings ranging from a blinking red LED on its front panel, to pop-up alerts in Drobo Dashboard, to email alerts. What Drobo does next is exceptional. It enters a self-healing mode where it repairs around the bad sector or disk, and will work until it returns to the safest state possible. If Drobo has sufficient time and free capacity (indicated by all lights returning to a solid green state), it can even withstand additional hard disk failures — that's the power of self-healing.

Storage Virtualization
BeyondRAID was designed from the ground up to allow the storage capacity of the array to expand and contract. BeyondRAID makes this a simple process by utilizing a technology called “virtualization.” Virtualization provides a layer of abstraction between the data requested by the file system and the physical location of that data on the disk drives. A given piece of data can be located on any drive, and on any physical location on that drive. This is what makes adding a drive to a Drobo so simple. The new drive just provides additional places to store data.

Virtualization is what enables BeyondRAID to effortlessly change the data arrangement on the drives, for example, changing data stored as a mirror into data stored as parity stripe, without interrupting the user access to data. Virtualization completely decouples the physical space available in the array from the space reported to the operating system. This is how BeyondRAID is able to eliminate the need to manually expand/contract the file system as more space becomes available or is removed.

Thin Provisioning
Thin provisioning is a technical term that describes how the BeyondRAID technology communicates with your operating system. BeyondRAID communicates with your OS about how much disk space you have, up to 16TB (this varies with older operating and file systems). Specifying a larger amount of storage than is physically available allows you to grow into the volume without having to reformat or migrate your data in order to add capacity. BeyondRAID automatically also reclaims space as you delete files.

Self-Managing
Drobo is highly automated storage. There are no complex configuration screens, DIP switches, confounding choices, web consoles or other complications that prevent so many other storage devices from working out of the box.

Drive Reordering
One long-standing requirement inherent in traditional RAID-based systems was that if for some reason you needed to remove the drives, you’d have to replace the drives in the exact same order. When you remove your disks from Drobo, you can put them back in any order you like.

Specifications:

Technical Specifications
Connectivity	1 x 10 / 100 / 1000 Mbps Ethernet port
Capacity	5 drive bays 3.5" SATA 1 / SATA II / SATA III drives Expandable by adding drives or hot-swapping drives with larger ones. Use the Capacity Calculator to estimate available storage in various configurations.
BeyondRAID Features	Thin Provisioning Instant Expansion Mixed Drive Size Utilization Automatic Protection Levels Virtual Hot Spare Data Aware Drive Re-ordering
Additional Software Features	DroboApps Drive Spin Down Drobo Copy Dim Lights Mac OS X Time Machine Support
Ethernet Features	Jumbo frames (up to 9000 bytes MTU)
Network Protocols	Common Internet File System (CIFS) / Server Message Block (SMB) Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
Hardware Features	Carrier-less Drive Bays Kensington Lock Port for Security (lock not included)
Operating System Support	Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later (Intel Only) Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later (Intel Only) Mac OS X 10.7.0 or later (Intel Only) Windows 7 SP1 32 and 64 bit Windows Vista SP1 32 and 64 bit Windows XP SP3 32 and 64 bit
Management	Drive bay indicator lights, capacity gauge, status lights Drobo Dashboard version 2.0 or later Drobo-initiated email notifications
Dimensions	Width: 5.9 in (150.3 mm) Height: 7.3 in (185.4 mm) Depth: 10.3 in (262.3 mm) Desktop Form Factor
Weight	8 lb (without hard drives, power supply, or packaging)
Power and Cooling	External Power Supply: AC Input - 100-240VAC~2.5A, 50-60Hz DC Output - 12-17VDC 8.33A & 100W Max Power Consumption: Idle System (standby, drives off): 12 watts Typical Busy System (four drives): 56 watts Single, fixed cooling fan
Environmentals	Operating Temperature: 10°C – 35°C (50° – 95°F) Non-Operating Temperature (storage): -10° – 60°C (14° – 140°F) Operating Humidity: 5% – 80%
Acoustics	Normal Operation: 31.8 dB
Certifications	Environmental: RoHS, WEEE, REACH Regulatory: FCC Part 15 Class B; Canada ICES-003 Class B; CE Mark; CISPR22:19973rd Edition Class B; MIC Mark; VCCI Approval to V.3; BSMI Approval to CNS13438; ACA Approval to AS/NZS 3548 Safety: UL, cUL, TUV, CB
Warranty	One (1) year warranty in the US or outside the EU or two (2) year warranty in the EU (as provided by EU law)

Box Contents Drobo FS 6 ft Ethernet cable 6 ft power cord with power supply (100 – 240V AC, 50/60 Hz) Quick Start Card Getting Started Guide (printed) Drobo PC Backup CD Resource CD includes: Drobo Dashboard application Help files Electronic Documentation

Diagram:

Sample Light Indicators Diagram

Capacity Calculator:

Use these interactive tools to estimate the amount of data storage available to fit your needs.

Drag drives and place them into the slots. To remove one from a slot just click on it.

This tool is for approximating the space utilization with various mixed disk configurations. Actual disk sizes can vary between vendors, and values calculated may differ slightly from actual results. Please refer to Drobo Dashboard for precise data calculations for storage installed in your Drobo.

Documentation:

Drobo FS Datasheet (.PDF)