Drobo With Thin Provisioning and Tiering

Drobo introduced a new line of storage solutions for small and medium businesses (SMBs). Designed specifically for customers who need critical business storage capacity without the complexity and price of legacy storage solutions, the new Drobo business systems are forprimary and secondary storage for Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, and similar business applications, as well as departmental file-sharing or offsite backup, and server virtualization deployments including those using VMware solutions.

 Drobo 12-Bay iSCSI SAN ($7,299)

"VMware recognizes the importance of affordable storage alternatives for firms implementing virtualization as they continue on the path toward IT as a service," explained Parag Patel, vice president, global strategic alliances, VMware. "Like larger organizations, SMBs are looking for ways to improve productivity and lower IT costs. Drobo streamlines VMware-virtualized storage for SMBs by delivering storage that is simple, scalable and automated – all with an affordable price tag."

With more than 150,000 customers worldwide, Drobo has been embraced by individual professionals and small businesses. The new Drobo business systems up the ante with improved system performance and redundancy, a new business-oriented dashboard and control panel and upgraded business support options – all while maintaining Drobo’s ease-of-use and the BeyondRAID data protection capabilities that define the Drobo brand.

"A complex quote, full of techno-babble and corporate speak, wouldn’t represent Drobo fairly," said Mark Peters, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "Now available for SMBs, Drobo is what it has always been – surprisingly advanced and scalable storage, packaged and priced for people who don’t need to have doctorates or second mortgages to have easy, functional and sophisticated capabilities at their fingertips."

"Our customers aren’t shy; they have tried Drobo for themselves and are now demanding more units for the rest of their business," said Tom Buiocchi, CEO at Drobo. "Our new Drobo for business family continues to meld even more big technology and Drobo ease-of-use for the best storage experience ever."

This announcement covers a new Drobo family of products.

They include:

• 8-bay file sharing Drobo with remote backup (Available now)
• 8-bay SAN (iSCSI-attached) Drobo (Available now)
• 12-bay SAN (iSCSI-attached) Drobo with expanded redundancy features, support for thin provisioning and deprovisioning and new data-aware tiering technology (Reserve now, shipping Q2-11)

Drobo’s new business line also includes performance enhancements, new management software and extended business support and services. The systems are based on the patented BeyondRAID technology and are certified for VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Exchange and Symantec backup.

Prices start just above $2K.