Conclusions and Costs
After looking at the Drobo FS, many of the NAS units I have had the opportunity to take a look at over the past year I feel I could reclassify as Network Attached Servers. When I say server, I refer to the software features such as
- *Direct* Remote Access. Although the FS is remotely accessible through mapped drives on a client machine, like a WHS.
- Website creation
- bittorrent services
- Media services
- IP camera services
- Print server
- Backup services
- External drive management (no external devices can be added).
- iSCSI. If you need iSCSI, you need the DroboElite or DroboPro.
- and more.
The Drobo Dashboard seems quite underwhelming, however it includes everything you need to perform basic NAS management, and it does it in a very efficient manner. If you need more, many of those services can be added through the use of DroboApps. But the Drobo FS is pure Network Attached Storage. Nothing less and only as much beyond that as desired. If you are looking for a full featured Network Attached Server out of the box, you may be disappointed by the Drobo FS.
In the end, if you are looking for a central network storage device without any extraneous bells and whistles, the Drobo FS may be the perfect choice. About the only feature that I would like to see as a native application is some type of client backup solution.
Then we have BeyondRAID. From where I sit as a Windows Home Server advocate, it is quite easy to really like this particular feature of the Drobo FS. One of the most attractive features that drew me to a WHS in the first place was the mix-and-match HD capability. Need more storage? Add a HD, any HD. The Drobo FS has this same basic mix-and-match capability. While the WHS DE technology redundancy is basically a RAID 1 solution, the BeyondRAID technology uses a more efficient (HD capacity-wise) RAID 5 or 6 redundancy. If you have an adequate number of drives attached.
Hardware-wise, I cannot complain, as the Drobo FS just feels solidly built. And it is always nice to turn a computer on and hear… silence. They include the little things, such as a Cat 6 Ethernet cable, that indicate they do not cut corners to save a few pennies on cost.
But we are at the end and we need to answer that most important question of all: how much does this device cost? From the US side, one can obtain various configurations from Newegg.
From the UK side, one can obtain a diskless model for £495.00 from Amazon UK.
More info: Data Robotics | Drobo FS
