Drobo: 8D 8-Bay Thunderbolt 3 DAS Solution

Drobo, Inc., a subsidiary of StorCentric, Inc., announced the Drobo 8D DAS solution.

The 8D is the first product launched after the StorCentric acquisition and reflects StorCentric’s commitment to building customer centric storage products. It has the feature set needed to supercharge creative workflows and act as primary storage for SMBs requiring reliable, easy to use, high capacity solutions.

Drobo 8D rear

Features include:

• 8 bays, two Thunderbolt 3 ports

• 128TB volume support

• With intelligent volume management

• Supports two, 4K monitors or one, 5K monitor

• With rear slot accelerator bay

• Dual fans for cooling

• Internal power supply

Bigger, better, bolder.
The 8D is designed with the firm’s legacy of maintaining a simplified storage experience, while keeping the customer requirements in mind. The expanding information growth for end users, and the need for fast speed for data transfer and digital image and video editing is the foundation for the 8D.

The 8D can support volume sizes of up to 128TB with a total storage pool of 256TB. This is the largest capacity for a direct attached company’s system, and it is compatible with the 14TB HDDs available on the market, with room to grow. The 8D intelligently combines both HDDs and SSDs in the front slots to deliver both capacity and performance, as well as Data Aware-Tiering to accelerate both read and write performance. It also comes equipped with the firm’s Accelerator Bay found on the rear panel for SSD use, enabling ‘Hot Data Caching’ to deliver performance boosts for applications such as Apple’s Final Cut, Adobe Lightroom, and Photoshop.

New to the company’s product line is the Intelligent Volume Management technology available on the 8D. This technology combines the flexibility of manual volume configuration with the convenience of the firm’s automation, allowing for separation of file systems as customer needs dictate.

“The 8D is the product that our customers have asked for and need,” said Mihir Shah, CEO, StorCentric. “The 8D was built on the immense popularity and demand of the 8 bay DroboPro. Creative professionals will experience the editing power for media rich, high resolution workflows, while the simplicity of the 8D will maximize limited resources for SMBs. The self-management features save time and money and provide an affordable entry point for all end users and allows for a ‘pay as you grow’ model for expanding data needs.“

Power to transform workflows
The company continues to address the needs of creative professionals who need reliable and scalable storage solutions to backup and edit their data, while utilizing the current and versatile interface on the market.

“With dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, the new Drobo 8D delivers the performance and speed for today’s demanding creative and data-intensive workflows,” said Jason Ziller, GM, client connectivity division, Intel Corp. “We are proud to see Thunderbolt 3 technology continue to offer the fastest, most versatile connection across a breadth of peripheral devices and user experiences.“

With the Thunderbolt 3 ports, the 8D can be connected to up to five Thunderbolt devices, and the bi-directional performance of Thunderbolt 3 allows all devices in the chain to achieve maximum throughput. It supports one 5K or two 4K displays for a full experience of resolution, contrast and depth for editing detail.

The 8D is available at an MSRP of $1,299 through the company webstore and select channel partners.

For a limited time, the 8D includes a free SSD when purchased through the US company’s webstore. Offer ends November 27, 2018.

Resource:
8D video

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