DroboPro won't connect to network
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@Dashrender said:
Yep, it's their original SAN (or what they like to call DAS).
Found this out the hard way when I got it...
I needed the throughput of Gb LAN instead of USB 2, so I was kinda forced to using it this way.
I need a replacement solution to use with Appassure - suggestions on NAS boxes?
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@Dashrender said:
Yep, it's their original SAN (or what they like to call DAS).
Found this out the hard way when I got it...
What were you hoping that it was going to be when you bought it?
It's a disk array, so if you hook it up directly it's a DAS and if you hook it up over a network it is a SAN. Since it has Firefire and USB options that are essentially always DAS (you can make a FireWire network, but no one does) and iSCSI is nearly always SAN (but you can skip the switch and make it a DAS.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Yep, it's their original SAN (or what they like to call DAS).
Found this out the hard way when I got it...
What were you hoping that it was going to be when you bought it?
It's a disk array, so if you hook it up directly it's a DAS and if you hook it up over a network it is a SAN. Since it has Firefire and USB options that are essentially always DAS (you can make a FireWire network, but no one does) and iSCSI is nearly always SAN (but you can skip the switch and make it a DAS.)
I, like you, thought it was NAS. Drobo specifically suggests only connecting it directly to the host using it, not to connect it through a switch. While it does use ISCSI, it is not supported to be used by more than one host at a time, period!
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@Dashrender said:
@Dashrender said:
Yep, it's their original SAN (or what they like to call DAS).
Found this out the hard way when I got it...
I needed the throughput of Gb LAN instead of USB 2, so I was kinda forced to using it this way.
I need a replacement solution to use with Appassure - suggestions on NAS boxes?
Depends on your needs. Just upgrading to the B800i is a bit of an upgrade although the B800i is very long in the tooth by now. Mine was from many years ago and was already a very old product then. Their SAN and NAS lines are just stagnating. Nothing has been added or updated (except for firmware updates) since I first got to know Drobo many years ago. (Except one desktop unit that I don't count as it is not in their business line.)
In general, if you are looking for something in the Drobo-esque line (and Drobo can be a fine choice, we like the B800i quite a bit) then Synology and ReadyNAS are the major "go to" players. They offer SAN, NAS, DAS, hybrid and a large array of sizing choices.
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@Dashrender said:
I, like you, thought it was NAS. Drobo specifically suggests only connecting it directly to the host using it, not to connect it through a switch. While it does use ISCSI, it is not supported to be used by more than one host at a time, period!
Even when you have many LUNs? Even DAS is meant to normally be more than one host at a time!
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@scottalanmiller said:
What were you hoping that it was going to be when you bought it?
That's just it, I didn't buy it, Appassure gave it to me as part of my purchase. and I've made due for 4+ years... but now I am considering other options... and considering my large for us spend on the new phone system.. they aren't going to be thrilled.
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How "big" do you need? What are the performance and capacity needs?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I, like you, thought it was NAS. Drobo specifically suggests only connecting it directly to the host using it, not to connect it through a switch. While it does use ISCSI, it is not supported to be used by more than one host at a time, period!
Even when you have many LUNs? Even DAS is meant to normally be more than one host at a time!
You might be able to create LUNs, haven't looked in ages.. but I did get on the horn with Drobo directly when I received it, and they sent me directly to the engineering team (Drobo was tiny and new back then) and they said.. yeah, no, never try to use more than one machine, chances of data loss are great!
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@scottalanmiller said:
How "big" do you need? What are the performance and capacity needs?
8 TB's is good, currently I'm running RED SATA drives, they are fine.
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What about speed? You can easily get 8TB on RAID 10 in a 1U four bay unit from either ReadyNAS or Synology. Four 4TB Red drives is very low cost and quite safe. Write performance will likely improve over what you have while read performance might decrease. But you can move to NFS and you can do NIC bonding to get to 2Gb/s (more or less) which is a nice upgrade.
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If you need a little more speed, you can move to Red Pro drives for not too much more money for a good percentage boost to both read and write without changing anything else.
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I'm not really sure what I need for performance, i.e. I can't give you a number. But I can tell you that I currently have 5 drives in a DroboPro working over ISCSI to my VM, which is where the software that is backing up my other VMs is working from. The other VMs are being backed up over my normal network at night through 2-3 1GB connections to each VM host.
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On, only five, not a full eight? The four bay ReadyNAS or Synology options in RAID 10 with much, much faster CPU and memory will crush what you have today in performance for write for sure and probably keep up in reads. If not, they will only barely be behind.
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I bet the ReadyNAS will also let me write to it directly from two different VMs too, saving the go through I currently deal with by having two different backup mechanisms. - don't ask
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What's the difference between the desktop models and the 1U rackmount ones? Besides nearly double the cost?
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@Dashrender said:
What's the difference between the desktop models and the 1U rackmount ones? Besides nearly double the cost?
Well, one fits in a rack and one doesn't
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@Dashrender said:
I bet the ReadyNAS will also let me write to it directly from two different VMs too, saving the go through I currently deal with by having two different backup mechanisms. - don't ask
Um, yes. NFS is inherently able to talk to lots of systems. That's built into the protocol.
If you use it as a SAN, it can have many LUNs, each connected to different hosts. So options there too.
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If you look, generally the rack units have much bigger processors and memory. The desktop units typically have Intel Atoms or small ARM processors. The rack ones typically have Xeons.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I bet the ReadyNAS will also let me write to it directly from two different VMs too, saving the go through I currently deal with by having two different backup mechanisms. - don't ask
Um, yes. NFS is inherently able to talk to lots of systems. That's built into the protocol.
If you use it as a SAN, it can have many LUNs, each connected to different hosts. So options there too.
I don't believe I need to use it as a SAN. NFS, I'll have to see if Windows 2008R2 supports that, I'm pretty sure 2012 does.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I bet the ReadyNAS will also let me write to it directly from two different VMs too, saving the go through I currently deal with by having two different backup mechanisms. - don't ask
Um, yes. NFS is inherently able to talk to lots of systems. That's built into the protocol.
If you use it as a SAN, it can have many LUNs, each connected to different hosts. So options there too.
I don't believe I need to use it as a SAN. NFS, I'll have to see if Windows 2008R2 supports that, I'm pretty sure 2012 does.
NFS has been supported in Windows since NT4 at least and I believe before that. But Windows never does it well. You would want your backup software to talk NFS, not Windows. If Windows is going to talk to a NAS directly, make it SMB.
