Drobo how many drives

The Drobo can be mixed and matched with different size and brand hard drives, creating a simple solution for expanding your data. However, to achieve maximum performance we recommend selecting desktop performance drives with a RPM speed. The faster a disk can spin, the faster it can read and write data. As Drobo will run on the slowest drive speed in the disk pack, we recommend inserting the same brand and type of drive into each Drobo bay.

For example, inserting five Seagate BarraCuda Pros will accelerate the speed. Desktop drives are typically faster than NAS drives because they spin faster. Some of the higher end NAS drives spin at RPM, but even those are slower than a quality desktop performance drive. The NAS drives have less platters, each with a higher density, whereas the desktop performance drives tend to have more platters at a lower density. This allows the drive heads to settle on the track quicker. The Drobo is compatible with solid state drives SSD , which are a form of flash memory.

Unlike hard disk drives HDD , they do not spin, allowing them to operate at faster speeds. Number of Drives — In all storage arrays, the more drives installed, the faster the performance. For example, if you are using a Bi in a VMware vSphere cluster, consider using 8 enterprise-grade drives instead of a smaller number such as 4.

A minimum of 6 hard drives is recommended with 3 SSDs. Price — Despite the many other things to consider, often the 1 deciding factor when people purchase drives is price. Since performance, reliability, and energy efficiency are also key purchase criteria, price should not be the only consideration. Purchasing high-quality drives will give you a better storage experience by reducing the chance of having to replace or rebuild a drive—ultimately saving you money.

Supported Drive Types: Drobo let's you take advantage of mix and matched drives to maximize your storage capacity and minimize up front investment and costs over-time. Matching Drives to Your Application Before deciding on which drive to choose, it is important to understand which drive types are best for your application. Which Drives Should I Use?

Configuration note for Bi: If being used for running databases, or hosting virtual machines, a minimum of six 6 hard drives and 3 SSDs is recommended. Overprovisioned space. Writing to an SSD is a time-consuming task if data already exists in the flash.

These are two reasons why SSDs are overprovisioned and have more memory than what's presented to the system. That overprovisioned space is used to maintain high levels of performance and to replace cells that have failed. Enterprise-grade SSDs often have a higher level of overprovisioned space, increasing performance and extending the life of the SSD.

SSD controller. The controller inside the drive is often different for enterprise and consumer-grade SSDs. SATA vs. While Drobos are designed to support a wide range of drive options, not all SSDs are the same. Make sure you check the SSD compatibility list to ensure that the drive you're considering works with your Drobo. This could cause more saturated networks if you have many errors during transfer. The other issue is that to successfully use Jumbo Frames, all the networking infrastructure end-to-end needs to support that technology needs to support Jumbo Frames.

That means the sending system, including the network interface card NIC ; the switches; the routers; the receiving system, including the NIC, all need to be set to accept Jumbo Frames. Many newer technologies do this automatically but it's always good to be sure before you set your frame size to to take advantage of Jumbo Frames. Here at Drobo HQ we get questions from folks putting their Drobo's in all sorts of situations.

One common way of deploying Drobo's is in a media center. Many of our customers happily connect Drobo's to their Microsoft Windows based media centers, however many AppleTV users are left in the cold, and stuck with the tiny amount of storage GB Apple chose to put in the device.

Who knows, but if you're like most of us you have Terabytes of movies and music that far exceed the size of the standard hard drive in the AppleTV. So, the problem is You already know how this movie ends. Enter the Drobo This useful piece of software transforms your AppleTV into a "real" media center. Giving AppleTV the capability to not only plays dozens of media types natively it only lets you play Quicktime files So, now thankfully you can attach a Drobo to your AppleTV, and have unlimited storage!

This is a perfect use for Drobo technology -- you need your movies and music to always be available and protected, but you also need the flexibility of growing your storage as your media collection grows. Installing Atv Flash on your AppleTV is a simple process, and once installed you simply plug in a Drobo filled with your favorite media, and boom It's movie time -- grab a big bowl of Orville Redenbachers because you're gonna be a while.

Heck, the software will even go out on the Internet and find album and movie art for the files stored on the Drobo. Did you know you can operate your Drobo without installing Drobo Dashboard? The Drobo products are so intelligent that they manage themselves.