People have asked me why I’m creating what amounts to a NAS. Why don’t I use Drobo or SmartStor for example?
The above don’t have ZFS, which is the best solution for redundant storage.
I can’t install Bacula on those systems. Sure, Bacula could run on another system and access that storage, but being directly on the system has advantages.
Or why don’t you use FreeNAS for example? You’d be running FreeBSD!
FreeNAS, to my knowledge, doesn’t come with gcc, a vital component for building and install ports. To fit into constrained hardware, they supply a stripped down version of FreeBSD. I’ll be interested to see FreeNAS 8, which will have ZFS support and FreeBSD 8.x, which will be a big plus!
Cost isn’t the reason for not using those products.
The Drobo unit I’d need is $1400. Which is pretty much identical to the cost of the Supermicro system I describe in an earlier post.
That said, I could built a much cheaper system and get more functionality than Drobo.
I think Drobo is a great product. It looks great, and I’ve heard many people using it.
It’s not quite what I need.
