DroboPro FS

The DroboPro FS NAS is great at one thing: protecting your data with Drobo's proprietary BeyondRAID technology. If data protection, disaster recovery, and simple file sharing are all you need in a NAS, the DroboPro FS is a very good option for a business. If you're looking for a that can multitask as an e-mail, print, or surveillance camera server, you'd be better off considering Editor's Choice winning ($900, 4.5 stars), which can handle these tasks and more. At a list price of just under $1000, the DS 1511+ is also half the cost of of the Pro FS, which lists for $1,999 without drives. Bundled with 8TB in drives, that price jumps to $2,699 and for 16TB $,3299, so this is not a cheap storage option for a small business.

It's expensive, yes, but the BeyondRAID technology works flawlessly–better than just about any other storage RAID array I have tested. I pulled drives out while media files were streaming; installed drives of varying capacities; mixed 2.5" with 3.5" SATA drives—I did everything that could possibly damage my data or prevent the array from rebuilding, short of setting the drives on fire—and my data remained intact. There is no question that the Pro FS is a strong sentry for data.

However, compared to other NAS boxes in its class, it's lacking in a lot of features, such as IP camera support, an easy way to setup remote access, integration with Windows Active Directory or ACLs and a full roster of third-party apps to extend its functionality. The Pro FS also does not have USB or eSATA ports. For USB 2.0 and eSATA expandability (as well as Firewire800), users must purchase the DroboPro or Drobo S, both of which are direct-attached storage devices, not NASes. Since most NAS devices come with either USB or eSATA (and sometimes both), I can't understand why Drobo is limiting USB to its DAS models, especially for the price you pay for the Pro FS.

Signature Drobo Design
The Pro FS has Drobo's minimalist NAS design: a glossy black box with big green LEDs for each drive running along the bottom of the chassis' front panel and smaller blue LEDs down the right-hand side. Removing the front panel reveals 8 drive bays. It's a large device, measuring 12.17"(W) x 5.46"(H) x 14.1"(L) and weighs 16 pounds without the drives. It can run standalone or as a rack-mountable 3U device in a standard 19" server rack. The rear panel has a power switch and dual Ethernet ports. The second network port provides connection failover or a way connect to a second network for offsite backup using Drobo Sync, but there's no Link Aggregation capability. The DroboPro FS has an attractive design and is free of unnecessary accoutrements found on many NASes these days, like LCDs with status messages that are often out of sync with messages in the management interface, or one-touch copy buttons on the chassis for quickly doing a copy job—a function that really isn't necessary for a business NAS that runs scheduled backups. Although it can fit into a server room, it's quiet enough to run on a desk in an office.

Setup
Setting up the DroboPro FS is a three-step cinch. Install the drives, install the Drobo Dashboard software on your computer, and then connect the Pro FS to the network. Actually, the trickiest step is installing the drives. It's kind of an unwieldy process. You have to press down a rather stiff tab and at the same time slide the drive in. As I also found out while reviewing, it's possible to insert a smaller 2.5" drive into a bay the wrong way and get it stuck.

Setup is straightforward and could be performed by just about anyone, no matter what their technical skill level. The Drobo Dashboard detected the NAS on the network in seconds and discovered out-of-date firmware and software both of which were automatically downloaded and installed without requiring any intervention from me. However, any time I rebooted the NAS while testing, I received a message that the software and firmware needed to be updated (despite already having been updated). I had to finally manually check a box in the dashboard to not ask me about upgrading again—which means when a new update is available, I won't get notified. It would be great if the folks at Drobo could prevent the software from prompting once the software updates to the most current level because the update process otherwise is so nice and seamless and is one of the better upgrade methods I have seen in networked devices.

Features and Functionality
There's not a lot to configure within the dashboard. There's a chart displaying used and free space which provides quite a detailed and good explanation of how the default BeyondRAID technology is using storage—for instance how much can be used for data and how much the system needs for data protection and overhead.

The dashboard also showed that by default, the system created and mounted a shared folder called "Public." There are also some "Advanced Controls" divided into two sub-categories: "Data" which when clicked, displays a graphic of the NAS and the drives in it as well as the state of each drive, and a "Tools" tab that brings up a list of basic commands, like reboot and shutdown.

Dual Disk Redundancy is another feature you can enable with the dashboard. Doing so provides protection against two simultaneous disk failures. There's also a power-saving option to set disk drive spin down, which powers down any inactive drives. The spin down setting will protect your hard drives from spinning needlessly, prolonging their lifespan. This applies even if your drives don't have the latest firmware that may spin them down automatically.

Feature-wise, there's not a lot happening with the DroboPro FS. You can of course perform basic admin tasks: create users and shares as well as setup email alerts in case of system failure. But beyond that, there is no support within the Drobo Dashboard to extend its functionality like there is with ($600, 4 stars), for instance. Out of the box, the TS-259 has MySQL, web services, iTunes, and many other features. The only way to bring these extras to the Pro FS is to install third-party apps, downloadable from the Drobo Apps site. I tried installing Firefly, a media server that works with iTunes. I had to download the app, copy an extracted file to the DroboApps share folder (which has to be created to install these apps), and then reboot the NAS. While the app did get installed and was running, it kept prompting me for authentication. To what, I do not know. The documentation was insufficient. Drobo doesn't support that many apps, so you can only extend the NAS's functionality so much. Moreover, I found installing these add-ons to be a messy affair best suited to those who enjoy tinkering with Linux commands.

Performance
Performance-wise, the device gave much better Read speeds than Writes. I received a decent Write speed of 31 Mbps, rather paltry when compared to the DS1511+'s 60 Mbps rate. Remember, when it comes to I/O, higher numbers mean more data being written to or read off the disks at faster rates. Faster means better performance. I got much better Read speeds of 60 Mbps— even slightly edging the DS1511+'s Reads. Overall the Pro FS delivers very good performance and should handle many concurrent user connections or video streaming adeptly.

I also tested performance after enabling Dual Disk Redundancy and I am a happy to report absolutely no impact on performance at all.

The true talent of this NAS resides in its absolutely superior data recovery and protection. While streaming a movie, I pulled a disk from one of the bays. My stream, as well as the NAS did not make the slightest protestation. I did receive an alert that something was amiss; what I did was simulate drive failure, after all. A blood-red text box flashed on screen, warning about the system. That message quickly changed to yellow, and in a few seconds I could see from the Drobo Dashboard that the NAS was quietly rebuilding the array, all without interrupting my movie. For businesses, this means that a drive failure on the Pro FS would not significantly interrupt productivity. BeyondRAID had my system restored in under 10 minutes. Although I did not have a lot of data on the drives, I was still impressed with how well BeyondRAID worked.

It's also worth mentioning that, before I simulated the drive failure, I had 3x 3.5" 2TB drives. I swapped out one of the drives for a 2.5" 1 TB before I attempted to hose the NAS. The change in configuration did not add any issue to the recover process. What makes BeyondRAID so flexible and powerful is that upon setup, the software automatically creates two 16TB thin-provisioned storage pools. Storage space is allocated once data is actually stored on the system. This means users can continue to scale their storage without reconfiguring the system.

Go Pro FS For File Sharing and Data Protection Only
For data protection, the BeyondRAID technology is superb. If data protection and recovery are an absolute must regardless of cost, than the DroboPro FS is a no-brainer. I take issue that for the price, there's no Drobo NAS option with direct-attached scalability via USB or eSATA, features which most of Drobo's competitors offer and often in products with a lower price.

If you need to do anything else with a NAS, such as configuring it up as a Web or media server, it's a potential headache with the DroboPro FS. If you want a NAS that gives good data recovery options plus a lot of extra features, look elsewhere. The DroboPro FS does earn 3.5 stars on the strength of its great data protection, however.

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