DroboElite

DroboElite™ offers the best data storage experience ever for small to medium businesses (SMBs) and departments looking to consolidate storage across multiple servers.

As the most powerful and flexible Drobo platform engineered to date, DroboElite redefines storage economics by delivering advanced features and performance usually reserved for more expensive solutions. Built on the award-winning BeyondRAID™ technology, DroboElite provides enterprise-level data safety and unprecedented expandability in a virtualized architecture that is both self-managing and self-healing. Dual iSCSI ports and significant performance enhancements deliver best-in-class performance ideal for consolidating storage or adding capacity to both virtualized and non-virtualized computing environments.

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Additional Information:
• Rack mount not included.
Rack Mount Kit available for purchase separately.

Price: $ 3,499.00



Overview

Multi-Host Connectivity
Have multiple servers that need storage? No problem. The DroboElite connects seamlessly to your existing TCP/IP network and utilizes the industry-standard iSCSI protocol to provide simple, consolidated storage for your servers.

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

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

Dual High-Speed iSCSI Interfaces
Unfamiliar with iSCSI? It’s an industry-standard, high performance protocol that has become extremely popular with businesses and individuals who demand high data storage throughput, but it can often be complex to manage. DroboElite changes that by introducing zero-click iSCSI connection creation with optional LUN-level CHAP authentication for both Windows and Mac OS X.

The Virtues of Smart Volumes
Create new volumes in seconds and manage up to 255 x 16TB volumes over time with ease. The innovative and time saving Smart Volume management technology integrated into DroboElite allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of drives rather than a specific physical drive allocation, eliminating the need to manage capacity at the volume level. Smart Volumes are also data aware, allowing deleted data blocks to be returned to the common pool and ensuring that volumes remain as efficient as possible over time.

Simplify Your VMware Environment
Storage is an integral part of a successful virtualization strategy. DroboElite has been tested for use with VMware to eliminate risk from your storage decision and help accelerate deployment of your virtual server environment.

Rack Mount Ready, Desktop Quiet
DroboElite 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 minimize operating noise.

Features

DroboElite offers the best data storage experience ever for small to medium businesses (SMBs) and departments looking to consolidate storage across multiple servers. Featuring eight-drive capacity, multi-host support, dual iSCSI ports, and up to 255 Smart Volumes, DroboElite delivers features and performance traditionally reserved for more expensive solutions.

Technology

What is BeyondRAID?
BeyondRAID leverages the same underlying data protection methodologies as traditional RAID, including mirroring and striping with parity; however, BeyondRAID applies these algorithms on top of a robust and flexible storage virtualization platform. This allows for the removal of the limitations and drawbacks normally associated with RAID.

Key benefits of BeyondRAID include:

  • Data protection against hard disk failure
  • Instant capacity expansion without downtime
  • Self-management
  • Automatic healing
Tech Specs
Drives: Accommodates from one to eight 3.5” SATA I / SATA II hard drives of any manufacturer, capacity, spindle speed and/or cache¹. No carriers or tools required
Interfaces: iSCSI (utilizes Gigabit Ethernet)², Hi-speed USB 2.0 (for Administration only)
Dimensions: 12.17” width x 5.46” height x 14.1” length
Weight: 16 lbs. 3 ozs. (without hard disks or packaging)
Cables Included: Ethernet (2 x 6’), USB 2.0 (1 x 6’) and power (1 x 6’)
Software: DroboPro Resource CD with Drobo Dashboard application (Windows and Mac OS X), Help files and electronic documentation
File System Support: NTFS, HFS+, FAT32 and EXT3
System Requirements: Windows XP (Service Pack 3), Vista (Service Pack 1), Windows 7, Server 2003, and Server 2008; Mac OS X 10.5.6; Mac OS X Server 10.5.6 or greater; Linux using EXT33; VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 or VMware vSphere 4
Warranty: One (1) year warranty in the US, two (2) year warranty in the EU (as provided by EU law), or as provided by local law.

¹ Refer to support page for more details. ² iSCSI support for Windows XP Server and Vista utilizes the Microsoft Windows iSCSI Initiator; for OS X Drobo Dashboard is required as OS X does not have an integrated iSCSI initiator. Drobo Dashboard includes iSCSI initiators for Windows and OS X free of charge and enables zero click iSCSI connection establishment. For Mac OS, 10.5.6. or greater required for iSCSI.
3Linux support currently in Beta.