Data Robotics entered the NAS market today with a new addition to its line of Drobo storage products.
The Drobo FS is a five bay NAS with a single Gigabit Ethernet port for LAN connection. It uses Data Robotics’ BeyondRAID technology that allows for easy storage expansion, has the ability to incorporate different-capacity drives into a storage volume and protects against failure of up to two drives. The FS also employs "self healing" technology that continuously examines data blocks and sectors on each drive to flag potential issues.
The FS uses a dual-core ARM processor with throughput of 30 to 40 MB/s, according to company representatives. SMB/CIFS and AFP network file systems are supported natively and NFS support is available via an optional app. There are no USB or eSATA ports for storage expansion or printer sharing support.
The system is managed by an application that is available for both Windows and Mac OS. Additional features can be added via DroboApps, which include Firefly iTunes and FUPPES UPnP / DLNA media servers, Apple Time Machine support, rsync server, CTorrent BitTorrent download client and Lighttpd web server.
The Drobo FS is available now with suggest list pricing from $699 (no drives) to $1,449 (5x 2TB drives) bundle.