Drobo Pro vs. HP AIO 400R

The current economic situation and the need to cut costs on a regular basis has become a part of almost every IT organization.  Lower costs, higher performance, and better productivity are a part of every IT persons objectives and quite difficult at that.  How can you offer better for less?

Drobo Pro is probably the answer you are looking for.  This post is a quick comparison of the cost of a Drobo Pro as compared to a HP AiO400R; both of which I use in our enterprise.

Costs:

• Drobo Pro with  8 x 2TB Drives: $3,499(MSRP)
• HP AiO400R with 4 x 500GB Drives: $5,219 (MSRP)

The choice is obvious, however details are necessary to make the right decision.

HP:

The HP is a 1u rack mount server with a Quad core processor, 2gb Ram, etc.  The server requires an operating system and licensing.  The connectivity is via gigabit Ethernet and allows for iSCSI protocol usage. The standard raid 5 configuration can only tolerate one point of failure.  Four total drive bays are available and come outfitted 4 drives for a current maximum of 2TB (Raid 5 slices will provide less usable space).  This server requires proprietary HP hard drives for the drive bays.

Drobo:

The Drobo Pro is a standalone storage solution which connects to existing server hardware via a spare gigabit Ethernet jack  and provides connectivity using the iSCSI protocol.  The Drobo Pro can tolerate two simultaneous drive failures in its default configuration.  Eight total drive bays are available and can be utilized with the largest drives available today, 2TB, for a total of 32TB with the standard deduction for redundancy.  Any SATA drive can be used in the Drobo Pro – mix and match sizes, speeds, etc.

Speed and Testing:

Both of these units use the iSCSI protocol for communication with the Drobo providing connectivity over USB and Firewire if required.  In an enterprise environment iSCSI will naturally be more prominent due to the speed and requirements for heavy usage.  Both units were setup in an enterprise environment side by side for testing until the final decision was made in regard to which one would become permanent.  The first test was for simple file sharing for user data with about 285GB of storage regularly being accessed.  The second test was to set up additional volumes for nightly differential backups to disk.  The third and final test was to have both units host SQL databases which typically see about 500-1000 transactions every few minutes.  The results were astounding:

HP: Performed well for 2-3 days and required a reboot.  The server was sluggish when accessed via Remote Desktop and quite cumbersome to operate.  The file shares performed perfectly as did the backup, however there was considerable speed loss in the SQL database shares.  The features that HP provides are not comparable to any other manufacturer…they are simply the best for monitoring, lights out features, etc.

Drobo Pro: Performed well, period.  It was plugged into an existing server via a gigabit Ethernet jack.  We did apply our own monitoring techniques to it since it is in reality only a storage device.  The unit was able to perform all three tests under heavy stress at any given moment and not have any problems what so ever.  SQL databases were performing similar to the speeds they experienced when hosted locally on a server.  Backups were smooth and user shares worked perfectly fine.

Naturally this post could go on forever but the above is a quick comparison of the two hardware products.  The cost alone is a significant factor in our making the decision to even try the Drobo Pro (we now have 3).  Redundancy also played a major part in the decision making process; the HP Raid5 solution would only tolerate one failure and the Drobo, 2 simultaneous drive failures.

The Drobo also allows usage of standard SATA drives in mix/match configurations and informs you of the need for larger drives when it starts to get close to its space limits.  The information is provided via LED lights on the front panel of the device.  The HP utilized customized hard drives from HP which are rather expensive to replace should failure occur.

Yes the comparison here is of a server as compared to a stand alone storage device…but even if one were to buy a low end server and a Drobo Pro the cost would be significantly less then compared to a HP AIO solution.

Please share your experiences and feedback via the comment system so we can all learn how and what types of storage solutions you are using.  Thanks.