Comments on: Review: DroboPro – Part I

By: The Storage Architect » Blog Archive » How To: Accessing DroboPro Dashboard With iSCSI

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 11:29:47 +0000

[...] my first review of the DroboPro, I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t access the ‘Pro from the [...]

By: RealTime - Questions: "If I unplug my Harddrives to put them on my new motherboard, I wont lose my data will I?"

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 20:13:42 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Daniel Mann

Daniel Mann — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 13:35:23 +0000

@Michael – You said that you are getting 100Mbytes/sec sustainted transfer from the DroboElite. Do you have a DroboPro also, and can you report your experienced transfer rates for the Pro?

Anyone else have performance numbers for the DroboPro? I’m interested in iSCSI, but also transfer rates when using NFS (via DroboApps) and local eSATA connections.

Thanks,

Daniel

By: The Virtualisation Architect » Blog Archive » How To: Accessing DroboPro Dashboard With iSCSI

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:29:17 +0000

[...] my first review of the DroboPro, I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t access the ‘Pro from the [...]

By: michael p

michael p — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:41:40 +0000

As a follow up, version 1.6.8 of Drobo Dashboard has been released and it seems to work fine in my configuration that was giving 1.6.7 trouble.

Michael

By: michael p

michael p — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:08:04 +0000

Hi Chris,

It has been a frustrating start, but in the end it is working. Yes, I am using the iSCSI initiator that comes with Drobo Dashboard. It seems that the tech support folks at Data Robotics don’t have a lot of experience working with the DroboElite. Along the way we all learned:

1. The Gateway setting of the iSCSI ports on the DroboElite needs to be set to the IP addr(s) of the NIC(s) on the host. Failing to do so will result in the Drobo spamming the host with lots of unnecessary ARP requests.

2. Don’t use DHCP on the host NIC(s). This just won’t work. Set the IP addr of each host NIC that you want to use for iSCSI to be almost the same as the IP addr that you have configured for the iSCSI interfaces on the Drobo. Just change the last portion of the IP addr so that none of the addresses you use will conflict.

3. Make sure that the IP addrs that you set for iSCSI on the DroboElite are not the same, even if you don’t use both ports. Along the way the tech support folks told me to just cut and paste the same settings from iSCSI1 to iSCSI2 as we were trying to verify that both ports worked. This cause endless headaches and unreliability (even though I never used more than one port) until they were made different. Setting them the same seemed like a bad idea to me, but I was just trying to do what I was told.

4. Don’t use version 1.6.7 of Drobo Dashboard (at least not on a Mac). I am currently running 1.6.5 and will continue to do so until 1.6.8 is released.

Now that it’s all working I can get a reliable 100Mbytes/sec sustained xfer rate when copying from my internal drives to the DroboElite.

Michael

By: Chris Evans

Chris Evans — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:01:12 +0000

Michael

What are you using as the iSCSI initiator (guessing the software which comes as part of the Dashboard)? I assume you have a direct cable between the devices? Are you able to pre-configure the DroboElite with the USB connection?

Chris

By: michael p

michael p — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:26:17 +0000

I have spent the better part of today trying to get a DroboElite to talk to a MacPro running OS X 10.6.2. At this point I am incredibly frustrated because as far as I can tell the iSCSI stuff is just broken. Add to that the fact that the documentation from Data Robotics regarding precisely how one is to configure the unit for iSCSI communication when directly connected to a host and you have a recipe for disaster and frustration. I have installed the latest 1.0.1 firmware and 1.6.7 Dashboard software to no avail. I can only talk to the DroboElite over USB. Once I pull that connection the Mac is never able to see that the DroboElite is connected via iSCSI no matter how many times I reboot the device, pull the power cord or other silly things. According to the documentation it is just supposed to work like magic and there is no further explanation including on their support website.

Very frustrating and a huge time waste.

Michael

By: Chris Evans

Chris Evans — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:59:29 +0000

Joe/Dion

Interesting stuff. Here’s a thought. I’m not aware if the DroboPro uses S.M.A.R.T. or anything similar when determining drive status. I know that errors are logged as I had my Drobo classic replaced and the log file showed transient disk errors. I will ask Data Robotics if there’s anything they can do to change the interface to add information on potentially failing disks.

Chris

By: Joe Perro

Joe Perro — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:50:50 +0000

I have recently had an experience relevent to @Dion. I have a DroboPro connected via iSCSI to a Macmini server. In January, after having it from 7 months, the Pro started acting sluggish — reads, writes, backups etc were going slower than expected. Then a hard drive failed. It was an old 500G Maxtor, one of 4 I moved into the Pro when I upgraded from my 4-drive Firewire Drobo. I’ve heard others say that a drive that is starting to die will reduce Drobo’s performance. So, @Dion, I recommend getting rid of the drive that has already failed in your Drobo and replacing it.