Data Robotics Unveils DroboPro

Data Robotics, the company that is changing the way the world stores and protects digital content, today introduced DroboPro, the first business class storage array that manages itself. DroboPro delivers a radically simplified storage experience enhanced by advanced self-monitoring and self-healing functionality that enables small and medium businesses (SMBs) to maintain uptime in the face of constant data growth. Built on the company’s award-winning BeyondRAID virtualized storage platform, DroboPro provides enterprise-level business continuity features—including protection against multiple concurrent drive failures and no-downtime capacity expansion with thin provisioning—while eliminating the lock-in of traditional RAID configurations.

DroboPro with BeyondRAID offers IT managers the unprecedented flexibility to replace failed disks, upsize the capacity of disks, and with one click switch between single and dual disk redundancy without costly downtime. Providing the most straightforward user experience ever designed for business class storage, DroboPro enables companies to devote more resources to business growth and significantly less time and money to managing their storage. With DroboPro IT managers no longer have to make difficult and confining choices upfront about how to provision capacity for the future.

“At many businesses, IT managers are responsible for much more than just storage, let alone having to predict the future of their company’s business and dynamic storage needs,” said David Reinsel, group vice president, storage and semiconductors, at industry analyst firm IDC. “A forward-thinking approach to flexible and highly available data storage, like Data Robotics’ DroboPro, not only should save IT managers capital and administrative costs, but also should provide them more time to focus on managing their front-end applications, such as Microsoft Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange.”

“It’s critical that our company’s data is always accessible. Devoting time and resources to manage our storage is challenging, especially as our data continues to grow each year. The ability to survive two drive failures and DroboPro’s high-speed iSCSI interface make it the ideal primary storage for our mission-critical applications server,” said Wayne Titus, owner, AMDG Financial. “Because DroboPro manages the RAID levels automatically, we no longer need to buy more storage than we need today in anticipation of estimated future requirements. As our business grows, DroboPro grows with us. We can add additional drives as needed, and the new capacity is instantly available. With DroboPro, we have a high-performance storage solution our business can afford, with the features, functionality, and ease of use that are ideal for any small business.”

DroboPro Features and Benefits

• Up to 8 Disks for Instant Expansion to 16TB and Beyond
  Customers can grow storage in line with their data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, customers simply insert a new hard disk or replace the smallest disk with a larger one, even when all eight disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found in DroboPro enables IT managers to efficiently mix and match disk brands, capacities and speeds, enabling continuous expansion as disk capacities grow. With DroboPro expansion is automatic and instantaneous, and access to data is always maintained.
  
  
• No Headache Dual Disk Redundancy
  The DroboPro Dual Disk Redundancy option protects against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard disks. Customers can engage this option with a single click, without ever losing access to their data. When it runs out of capacity, customers can switch DroboPro back to single disk redundancy with a click. Unlike moving between RAID 5 and RAID 6, there’s no need to reformat or migrate data off of the array, potentially saving hours or days.
  
  
• The Virtues of Smart Volumes
  Smart Volumes allow customers to create new volumes in seconds and manage 16TB volumes over time with ease. The timesaving Smart Volume management technology integrated into DroboPro allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of disks rather than a specific physical disk allocation. The labor of resizing and migrating volumes is replaced with the simplicity of intelligent engineering.
  
  
  Triple Interface Featuring iSCSI
  DroboPro attaches directly to a server or workstation that requires storage, or to a shared server or workstation on a network that can provide access to multiple clients. Interface options include iSCSI (using Gigabit Ethernet), FireWire 800, and USB 2.0. DroboPro reduces the complexity of iSCSI by introducing zero configuration connection establishment for both Windows and Mac OS X.
  
  
• Rack Mount Ready, Desktop Quiet
  DroboPro fits into a rack mount environment or can sit on a desktop. Dual smart fans automatically manage their speed to optimize both cooling and operating noise. (DroboPro rack-mount sold separately.)

“DroboPro was built on the belief that there is no reason that storage should be complex or expensive in order to be effective. We’ve taken storage to a level that is truly simple and straightforward without losing the necessary features that businesses need,” said Dr. Geoff Barrall, CEO and founder of Data Robotics. “Leveraging the capabilities that are built into DroboPro, businesses can quickly take advantage of this robust, cost-effective storage solution to ease the burden of nonstop data growth.”

Price and Availability
DroboPro is currently available starting at an entry price of $1299 MSRP, with multiple configurations to $3999 for a 16TB rack-mountable solution.

Up to 8 Disks of Instant Expansion to 16TB and Beyond
Grow your storage in line with your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard disk or replace your smallest disk with a larger one, even when all eight disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found in DroboPro enables you to mix n’ match disk brands, capacities and speeds. This allows continuous expansion as disk capacities grow. With DroboPro expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.


No Headache Dual Disk Redundancy
Enable the Dual Disk Redundancy option to protect against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard disks. It’s all done with a single click, without ever losing access to your data. Running out of space? You can even switch back to single disk redundancy with a click. For instance, unlike moving between RAID 5 and RAID 6, there’s no need to reformat or migrate data off of the array, potentially saving you hours or days.


Triple Interface Featuring iSCSI
Attach DroboPro directly to the server or workstation that requires storage or to a shared server or workstation on your network that can provide access to multiple clients. Interface options include:

• iSCSI (utilizes Gigabit Ethernet)
• FireWire 800
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0

Unfamiliar with iSCSI? It’s a high performance protocol that has become extremely popular with businesses, but it can often be complex to manage. DroboPro changes that by introducing zero click iSCSI connection establishment for both Windows and OS X.





The Virtues of Smart Volumes
Create new volumes in seconds and manage up to 16 x 16TB volumes over time with ease. The innovative and timesaving Smart Volume management technology integrated into DroboPro allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of disks rather than a specific physical disk allocation. The labor of resizing and migrating volumes is replaced with the simplicity of intelligent engineering.

Rack Mount Ready, Desktop Quiet
DroboPro is equally at home in a rack mount environment as it is on your desktop. Dual smart fans automatically manage their speeds to optimize both cooling and operating noise. (DroboPro Rack Mount sold separately.)

DroboPro: RAID without Regrets

BeyondRAID Technology
Every Drobo product comes with the revolutionary BeyondRAID storage technology — the next generation of redundant disk protection. BeyondRAID will not only keep your data safe, but also will increase uptime and availability. BeyondRAID technology offers several improvements over traditional RAID-based storage systems, including the flexibility to replace failed disks, increase capacity and with a single click switch between single and dual disk redundancy all without costly downtime.

Key features of BeyondRAID include:

• Data protection against two simultaneous hard disk failures
• Instant capacity expansion without downtime
• Self-management
• Automatic healing

File System and Operating System Agnostic
DroboPro and its underlying BeyondRAID technology currently support the Windows, Mac and Linux¹ platforms, with file system support for NTFS, HFS Plus, EXT3 and FAT32. Since DroboPro is a block level system, it easily adapts to almost any environment.

Mixed Drive Capacity Utilization
Grow storage in line with data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, customers can simply insert a new hard disk or replace the smallest disk with a larger one, even when all eight disk bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology enables IT managers to efficiently mix n’ 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.


Redundantly Safe
Utilizing dual disk redundancy, DroboPro’s BeyondRAID technology can ensure your data is safe even if up to two disks fail simultaneously—all without a moment of downtime. You can even switch between single and dual disk redundancy with a click. You’ll feel safer knowing that if disks do fail, DroboPro 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 DroboPro 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 bit even if it does not contain user data.

Since DroboPro 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 DroboPro 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 DroboPro does next is exceptional. Entering a self-healing mode where it repairs around the bad sector or disk, DroboPro will work until it returns to the safest state possible. If DroboPro 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.


Smart Volumes
Create new volumes in seconds and manage up to 16 x 16TB volumes over time with ease. The innovative and timesaving Smart Volume management technology integrated into DroboPro allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of disks rather than a specific physical disk allocation. The labor of resizing and migrating volumes is replaced with the simplicity of intelligent engineering. And increasing the available pool of storage on DroboPro is as simple adding or upsizing drives.


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, say, 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 remove 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 per volume (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
DroboPro is storage that manages itself. 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 DroboPro, you can put them back in any order you like.

What's BeyondRAID? Storage without limitations.

BeyondRAID leverages the benefits of traditional RAID systems, while leaving many of the limitations behind. This next-generation of redundant storage technology brings together safety, reliability, expandability, efficiency and ease-of-use.

BeyondRAID fits in the same place of the software stack as traditional RAID between the file system and the driver. Hence, BeyondRAID can be adopted without any change in infrastructure, allowing you to maintain your current file system and operating system, while eliminating the friction costs typically associated with moving to a new technology platform

Problems with Traditional RAID
IT managers are faced with the complicated question of which one of the eleven traditional RAID levels they should deploy for their business storage.

Traditional RAID suffers from two major disadvantages:

1. Lock-in of RAID levels for the lifecycle of the data
2. a forced tradeoff between simplicity vs. safety and stability vs. expandability

As business conditions change over time, IT managers are obliged to choose between purchasing a new RAID array and the cost and effort of redeploying a more appropriate RAID level.

BeyondRAID is RAID without Regrets
Data Robotics BeyondRAID solves these two critical issues, delivering flexibility without downtime. Built on an advanced storage virtualization platform, BeyondRAID chooses the correct RAID algorithm based on data protection needs at any given moment. Since the technology works at the block level, it can write blocks of data that alternate between data protection methodologies. If an IT manager needs to add storage capacity to a Drobo product, he or she can simply insert additional disk drives or replace the smallest disks—no need to change RAID levels, purchase a new storage array or go through the complex administration of pooling RAID groups. The BeyondRAID featured on DroboPro 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.

Head-to-head with Traditional RAID
Feature by feature, BeyondRAID consistently beats traditional RAID. If you already understand how RAID 0, 1, 5 or 6 operates, you’ll understand the fundamentals of BeyondRAID as it relies on the same underlying data protection methodologies, namely mirroring and striping with single or dual parity. The difference is in how BeyondRAID interacts with the storage itself.