The Drobo B800i 8-bay iSCSI SAN storage is optimized for small businesses to provide reliable and high-performance storage to servers running applications like file services, data protection, email, and server virtualization. It integrates seamlessly into your TCP/IP network infrastructure and utilizes the industry-standard iSCSI protocol to provide simple, consolidated storage for your servers. Featuring eight-drive capacity, multi-host support, dual iSCSI ports, and up to 255 Smart Volumes, Drobo 8-bay iSCSI SAN storage for Business delivers features and performance traditionally reserved for more expensive solutions.

Drobo delivers "big storage in a small box" to create the best storage experience ever for small and medium sized businesses and departments at larger enterprises. Built on proven BeyondRAID technology, Drobo redefines IT economics by delivering award-winning iSCSI SAN storage and advanced capabilities usually reserved for more expensive enterprise solutions.

Drobo iSCSI SAN storage is designed to provide reliable and high performance storage to servers running business-critical applications like data protection, email, and server virtualization. It connects seamlessly to your existing TCP/IP network and utilizes the industry-standard iSCSI protocol to provide simple, consolidated storage for your servers.

With two iSCSI models available, there's a Drobo that's right for your application. The 8-bay cost-effective B800i model is ideal for data protection or for small business building a SAN for the first time. The powerful 12-bay B1200i model adds Data-Aware Tiering and redundant, hot-swappable components to ensure maximum performance and high-availability of business applications.

BeyondRAID Technology
A Drobo B800i iSCSI array can hold up to 24TB of raw storage and beyond. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard drive or replace your smallest drive with a larger one, even when all drive bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology in Drobo enables you to leverage different drive capacities, allowing for continuous expansion as larger drives become available. With Drobo, expansion is automatic and instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.

Drobo can protect from single or dual drive failures and has a virtual hot spare capability - ensuring all drives are used at all times.

About iSCSI SANs
Unfamiliar with iSCSI? It's a high-performance protocol that's become extremely popular storage networking technology in IT environments, but it can often be complex to manage. Drobo B800i changes that by introducing zero-click iSCSI configuration for both Windows and Mac OS X servers. iSCSI can be used to connect storage directly to servers using a high-speed connection, or it can be used to create a Storage Area Network (SAN) with to 2, 5, or 10 plus servers.

iSCSI SAN for business-critical
Shows a dedicated iSCSI SAN for business-critical applications and server virtualization, which provides high performance, reliability, and security. Volumes created on a Drobo are assigned to a server, resulting in the server thinking it has locally attached storage.

Multi-Host Connectivity
Have multiple servers that need storage? No problem. The Drobo 8-bay iSCSI SAN storage for Business connects seamlessly to your existing TCP/IP network and utilizes the industry-standard iSCSI protocol to provide simple, consolidated storage for your servers.

Up to 8 Disks of Instant Expansion to 16TB and Beyond
Grow your storage to meet your data capacity needs with minimal effort. To add capacity, simply insert a new hard drive or replace your smallest drive with a larger one, even when all eight-drive bays are full. Unlike traditional RAID systems, the BeyondRAID technology found on Drobo 8-bay iSCSI SAN storage for Business enables you to mix and match capacities, drive brands and speeds. This allows for continuous expansion as drive capacities grow. With Drobo, expansion is automatic, instantaneous and access to data is always maintained.

Protection from Two Drive Failures
Enable the dual-drive redundancy option to protect your data from failure of up to two hard drives. It's all done with a single click and without ever losing access to your data. Running out of space? Switch back to single-drive redundancy at any time. Unlike moving between traditional RAID 5 and RAID 6, there's no need to reformat or migrate data from the Drobo B800i, potentially saving you hours or days of downtime.

Smart Volumes with Thin Provisioning
Create new volumes in seconds and manage up to 16TB volumes over time with ease. The innovative and time-saving Smart Volume management technology with Thin Provisioning integrated into the Drobo B800i allows volumes to pull storage from the common pool of disks rather than a specific physical disk allocation. The labor of resizing and migrating volumes is replaced with the simplicity of intelligent engineering. Smart Volumes are also data aware, allowing deleted data blocks to be returned to the common pool and ensuring that volumes remain as efficient as possible over time.

Simplify Your VMware Environment
Storage is an integral part of a successful virtualization strategy. Drobo has been tested for use with VMware to eliminate risk from your storage decision and help accelerate deployment of your virtual server environment.

Optimizing Business Applications
Like with business applications, Drobo is ideal for building your first server virtualization cluster and had been certified for VMware vSphere and Citrix Xen Server environments.

Drobo is also a cost-effective way to provide reliable storage for your backup server and has been certified for use with Symantec Backup Exec.

Drobo Care Service and Support Program
The Drobo Care service and support program extends your peace of mind beyond the standard warranty terms for 3 years and beyond. With DroboCare, we're always here to answer your call and if something happens to go wrong, we'll send you a replacement Drobo right away.

Rack Mount Ready, Desktop Quiet
Drobo B800i can be deployed in a server room for IT use or on a desktop for workgroup sharing of storage, thanks to its compact design and quiet operation. Dual smart fans automatically manage their speeds to optimize cooling and minimize operating noise. (Drobo B800i Rack Mount sold separately.)

With an iSCSI SAN, centralized storage is provided to each server over a high-speed network and storage can be allocated or expanded instantaneously. Also, any single server does not tie up free space and there are fewer storage devices to maintain.