Preview: New SMB Storage Arrays From Drobo

With capacities from 16TB to 36TB, these Drobo network storage products support all the right standards and incorporate Drobo's BeyondRAID technology which lets users add to a redundant array and mix hard drives of different capacities in an array. Paul Mah was impressed.

"Storage company Drobo earlier this month rolled out a trio of new storage arrays targeted squarely at SMBs. The new arrays are the 8-bay B800fs for up to 16TB of raw capacity, the 8-bay B800i SAN for up to 24TB of raw capacity and the 12-bay B1200i SAN with advanced capabilities and up to 36TB of raw capacity. The B800fs and B800i are currently shipping, though the B1200i will only be generally available in the second quarter.

The lower-end B800fs is positioned as network-attached storage (NAS) for file sharing, and supports the Common Internet File System (CIFS) and Apple Filing Protocol (AFP). The B800i and B1200i are positioned as SAN models, on the other hand, and come with iSCSI with support for up to 255 LUNs; the latter comes with dual redundant, hot-swappable power supplies and works with both standard SATA/SATA II as well as enterprise-centric SAS (3.0Gbps) drives. In addition, a new data-aware tiering technology found only in the B1200i will move data from a high-end disk to another physical disk depending on its assigned importance. In addition, the above-mentioned models sport at least dual Gigabit Ethernet ports with failover and jumbo frames support (the B1200i has 3x Gigabit Ethernet ports). The B1200i and B800i are also certified for VMware and Citrix virtualized environments, as well as Symantec Backup Exec 2010."