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Data Robotics, manufacturers of the Drobo-line of SOHO storage appliances, expanded its line this week with the addition of new models targeting SMB customers with virtualized IT environments, and is supporting it with a new expanded channel program.
The new Drobo SMB storage appliances come in completely new form factors from the company's original product lines in part to emphasize the fact that they are focused on a different customer set, said Kevin Epstein, vice president of product marketing for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor.
"Feedback from our customers was that our original box was too cute," Epstein said. "So we changed. We're building this from the ground-up for SMBs."
That is not to say Drobo is taking out all the "cute," Epstein said.
"We're putting the high-end concept of RAID for businesses into a little, cute, toaster-sized box that's affordable and doesn't look like RAID," he said. "Drobo is what would have happened if the designers of the iPhone had invented RAID."
Drobo this week unveiled three new SMB storage appliances, all of which are certified for VMware and Citrix virtualized environments.
The model B800fs with eight drive bays connects to an Ethernet network over dual redundant Gbit cables to provide up to 16 TBs of raw capacity for file sharing between multiple users.
The eight-drive model B800i can be the center of an iSCSI SAN with room for up to 24 TBs of raw capacity.
The third, the 12-bay model B1200i is similar to the B800i, but has up to 36 TBs of raw capacity and includes redundant, hot-swappable components.
The 12-bay appliances also include two other sophisticated features, Epstein said.
The first is automated thin provisioning, which he said is a very unusual feature to be included with SMB storage. With automated thin provisioning, customers can tell a capacity-hungry application like Microsoft Exchange that it has, for example, 20 TBs of storage available to use while really giving it only 4 Lbs. The appliance warns users and solution providers that the physical capacity is being reached with a series of green lights on the front panel, giving them time to add more hard drives as needed, he said.
The second is automated application-aware storage tiering, Epstein said. The appliance can have a mixture of SSDs and SATA drives, and the Drobo software automatically ensures that data is allocated to the right type of storage medium not just based on the application but on a block-by-block basis depending the data. "So the CEO who checks e-mail on his Blackberry every 30 minutes will have his e-mails in faster storage," he said.
"We decided we are going all-out with the Drobo," he said. "We want to add it all in. Why? Because we can. You can be sophisticated and affordable at the same time."
Next: New Business Premier Channel Program
