Comments on: Drobo http://bart.noordervliet.net/archive/50 (Projects and Ramblings) Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:21:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: bart http://bart.noordervliet.net/archive/50/comment-page-1#comment-53 bart Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:34:13 +0000 http://bart.noordervliet.net/?p=50#comment-53 I must say that surprises me somewhat. My conclusion with the regular Drobo was that I shouldn't try to use a product clearly aimed at home/home-office use in an enterprise environment. The DroboElite, however, is marketed in a totally different manner. If it's true that it still falls short of the mark, then that is a really bad show by Data Robotics. In general, I'm certainly disappointed by the regular Drobo. They've been tauting linux support for years, but it still has a little note saying 'beta'. That's been there for years and it doesn't seem to be progressing. After writing the post above, I used it with a 2TB LUN-size and ext3 for a while, but that setup too failed with IO-errors eventually. I built a server with linux MD-raid and LVM then to replace it and it's running fine now. The Drobo now sits on my desk, hooked to my Windows Vista PC and formatted ntfs. That's working fine, though the support from Data Robotics is very poor. I noticed that you can't update the Drobo software or firmware without the dashboard running as Administrator. Under Windows Vista, that means you need to kill all drobo processes from the task manager, then go into your Program Files (since they use an unusual start-menu shortcut, that you can't right click and run as Administrator) to start the dashboard with admin privileges. I emailed these instructions in detail to Data Robotics, since I imagine the Drobo target audience on average would have a lot of trouble figuring this out. They thanked me for my input, but the only thing they did with it was add this to the knowledge base post about updating: "Ensure you have administrator privileges on your computer. You may have to close Drobo Dashboard completely and reopen it with administrative privileges." I doubt that's enough information for the average Drobo user. Good job DR for being too lazy to just cut-n-paste my detailed instructions. I must say that surprises me somewhat. My conclusion with the regular Drobo was that I shouldn’t try to use a product clearly aimed at home/home-office use in an enterprise environment. The DroboElite, however, is marketed in a totally different manner. If it’s true that it still falls short of the mark, then that is a really bad show by Data Robotics.

In general, I’m certainly disappointed by the regular Drobo. They’ve been tauting linux support for years, but it still has a little note saying ‘beta’. That’s been there for years and it doesn’t seem to be progressing. After writing the post above, I used it with a 2TB LUN-size and ext3 for a while, but that setup too failed with IO-errors eventually. I built a server with linux MD-raid and LVM then to replace it and it’s running fine now. The Drobo now sits on my desk, hooked to my Windows Vista PC and formatted ntfs. That’s working fine, though the support from Data Robotics is very poor. I noticed that you can’t update the Drobo software or firmware without the dashboard running as Administrator. Under Windows Vista, that means you need to kill all drobo processes from the task manager, then go into your Program Files (since they use an unusual start-menu shortcut, that you can’t right click and run as Administrator) to start the dashboard with admin privileges. I emailed these instructions in detail to Data Robotics, since I imagine the Drobo target audience on average would have a lot of trouble figuring this out. They thanked me for my input, but the only thing they did with it was add this to the knowledge base post about updating:

“Ensure you have administrator privileges on your computer. You may have to close Drobo Dashboard completely and reopen it with administrative privileges.”

I doubt that’s enough information for the average Drobo user. Good job DR for being too lazy to just cut-n-paste my detailed instructions.

]]> By: Tyghe http://bart.noordervliet.net/archive/50/comment-page-1#comment-52 Tyghe Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:34:50 +0000 http://bart.noordervliet.net/?p=50#comment-52 I'm starting to come to the same conclusion here, except with the DroboElite version. I was hoping to use 3 of them to connect to 2 servers that provide samba and nfs to our academic community on campus. It seems that I am now going to have to come up with a fairly crazy scenario just to get what I thought would work to work. I’m starting to come to the same conclusion here, except with the DroboElite version.
I was hoping to use 3 of them to connect to 2 servers that provide samba and nfs to our academic community on campus. It seems that I am now going to have to come up with a fairly crazy scenario just to get what I thought would work to work.

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