DroboElite

DroboElite™ offers the best data storage experience ever for small to medium businesses (SMBs) and departments looking to consolidate storage across multiple servers. As the most powerful and flexible Drobo platform engineered to date, DroboElite redefines storage economics by delivering advanced features and performance usually reserved for more expensive solutions. Built on the proven BeyondRAID™ technology, DroboElite provides enterprise-level data safety and unprecedented expandability in a virtualized architecture that is both self-managing and self-healing. Dual iSCSI ports and significant performance enhancements deliver best-in-class performance ideal for consolidating storage or adding capacity to both virtualized and non-virtualized computing environments.

Multi-Host Connectivity

Have multiple servers that need storage? No problem. The DroboElite connects seamlessly to your existing TCP/IP network and utilizes the industry-standard iSCSI protocol to provide simple, consolidated storage for your servers.

Up to 8 Disks of Instant Expansion to 16TB and Beyond

Grow your storage to meet your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard drive or replace your smallest drive with a larger one, even when all eight-drive bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found on DroboElite enables you to mix and match capacities, drive brands and speeds. This allows for continuous expansion as drive capacities grow. With DroboElite, expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.

No Headache Dual-Drive Redundancy

Enable the dual-drive redundancy option to protect against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard drives. It’s all done with a single click, without ever losing access to your data. Running out of space? You can click to switch back to single drive redundancy. Unlike moving between traditional RAID 5 and RAID 6, there’s no need to reformat or migrate data off of the array, potentially saving you hours or days of downtime.

Dual High-Speed iSCSI Interfaces

Unfamiliar with iSCSI? It’s an industry- standard, high performance protocol that has become extremely popular with businesses and individuals who demand high data storage throughput, but it can often be complex to manage. DroboElite changes that by introducing zero- click iSCSI connection creation with optional LUN-level CHAP authentication for both Windows and Mac OS X.

* Learn more about DroboElite and iSCSI

The Virtues of Smart Volumes™

Create new volumes in seconds and manage up to 255 x 16TB volumes over time with ease. The innovative and timesaving Smart Volume management technology integrated into DroboElite allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of drives rather than a specific physical drive allocation, eliminating the need to manage capacity at the volume level. Smart Volumes are also data aware, allowing deleted data blocks to be returned to the common pool and ensuring that volumes remain as efficient as possible over time.

Simplify Your VMware Environment

VMware Certified Storage is an integral part of a successful virtualization strategy. DroboElite has been certified for use with VMware vSphere 4 to eliminate risk from your storage decision and help accelerate deployment of your virtual server environment.

Rack Mount Ready, Desktop Quiet

DroboElite is equally at home in a rack mount environment as it is on your desktop. Dual smart fans automatically manage their speeds to optimize both cooling and minimize operating noise.

What is BeyondRAID?

BeyondRAID leverages the same underlying data protection methodologies as traditional RAID, including mirroring and striping with parity; however, BeyondRAID applies these algorithms on top of a robust and flexible storage virtualization platform. This allows for the removal of the limitations and drawbacks normally associated with RAID.

Key benefits of BeyondRAID include:

• Data protection against hard disk failure
• Instant capacity expansion without downtime
• Self-management
• Automatic healing

Technical Specifications

Disk Interface Eight-bay capacity 3.5" SATA I or SATA II hard drives No carriers required Mix and match capacities, drive brands and speeds¹
	Width Height Length Inches 12.17 5.46 14.1 mm 309.1 138.7 358.1 Weight: 16lbs 3ozs (without hard drives or packaging) 3U for a standard 19" rack
Host Interface iSCSI (utilizes Gigabit Ethernet)² High Speed USB 2.0 Accoustics³ Normal operation: 30.4 dB Box Contents DroboElite 6' USB 2.0 cable Two 6' Ethernet cables 6' power cord User Guide and Quick Start Instructions Resource CD includes: Drobo Dashboard application Help files Electronic Documentation Warranty Two (2) year warranty or as provided by local law.	Power Specifications Idle system (standby, drives off): 13 watts Typical idle system - idle, drive spin down mode (eight drives): 25 watts Typical busy system (eight drives): 82 watts Operating System Support Windows XP (Service Pack 3) Windows Vista (Service Pack 1) Windows 7 Windows 2003 Server Windows 2008 Server Mac OS X 10.5.6 or greater (Intel Only) Mac OS X Server 10.5.6 or greater (Intel Only) Linux (support is currently in Beta) VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 or VMware vSphere 4 File System Options Windows: NTFS Mac OS X: HFS+ Linux4: EXT3 VMware: VMFS

¹ Refer to support page for more details.

² iSCSI support for Windows XP Server and Vista utilizes the Microsoft Windows iSCSI Initiator; for OS X Drobo Dashboard is required as OS X does not have an integrated iSCSI initiator. Drobo Dashboard includes iSCSI initiators for Windows and OS X free of charge and enables zero click iSCSI connection establishment. For Mac OS, 10.5.6. or greater required for iSCSI.

³ Acoustics tests performed 1m from the front of DroboPro with eight 1TB Western Digital GreenPower™ drives during a file copy to DroboPro. DroboPro has a smart, multi-speed fan system governed by internal temperature sensors that operate the fan at optimal speeds. The fan is programmed to minimize noise, but never at the expense of disk integrity. The fan will switch to higher speeds if necessary in hot operating environments or during strenuous usage to keep the temperature within the drive manufacturer’s specifications.

⁴ Linux support currently in Beta.