use cases Archives -

Help us test drive & document Drobo in media workflows

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 2 Comments

I usually start every blog post with a reference or observation, but will keep this one short. Folks who buy technology or anything of high value love reading reviews from real users. I was chatting with Ewdison Then of Slashgear, who has recently test driven a new BMW X1 Crossover in Japan. I was thinking that it would have been cool to see some Tokyo drift racing in the review …

Have YOU ever wanted to play with a cool new technology and see how fast you can go for yourself? … Continue Reading

Blogging ain’t easy, but surveys are

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 0 Comments

Anyone can do it, right? Blog that is, all you need is an Internet connected device and an opinion. Since the beginning of this year I have 34 posts before this one for a respectable pace, though my pace has slowed considerably of late. Overcoming physics is not generally easy, which explains why I have not been able to figure out a way through some parasitic drag to maintain a brisk pace. No shortage of opinions, got Internet too, so it must be the presence of multiple activities in relative proximity contributing to some of my personal interference drag.

Someone who makes blogging look very easy also happens to be working with Drobo to host a live event later this week Friday 9/21: no PPT, several survey questions, lots of analysis and advice from Scott Lowe (@otherscottlowe). Everyone is welcome, and if you are a smaller shop (<250 users), we especially welcome your input! Participants will be entered to win a Drobo B800i iSCSI SAN system, providing you with >30TB of storage! It’s a $2,999 value and perfect for a virtualization lab at home (and your personal data and media . REGISTER NOW for the live chat.… Continue Reading

The customer is always right

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 1 Comment

Not unlike most folks, my first job was not in high tech, it was in customer service. I was a waiter in high school at a 24-hour diner prior to joining the Marine Corps. Before that, I was a paperboy for the San Jose Mercury News back when kids still delivered papers on bicycle. I earned carrier of the month in 1984 right about the same time that the popular Atari video game Paperboy was released.

In customer service, the motto “The customer is always right” is well understood.… Continue Reading

Drobo in a land down under

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 0 Comments

I spent the end of the week in Australia, which is beautiful in the fall season. Can you believe it has been 30 years since the Men at Work song hit the airwaves and introduced us to the “land down under,” the old fashioned way (i.e., before YouTube)? I did not witness any man “chunder” while visiting Sydney as the well-known song would imply men do, but I did speak with many customers who are using Drobo business storage to back up and protect business data.

The discussions were very fitting, as it was just prior to World Backup Day.… Continue Reading

Heterogeneous makes for a better environment

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 0 Comments

In high tech we tend to use a lot of complex terms: environment, encapsulation, epicenter, infrastructure, scalability, tertiary, user-centric, virtualization … the list goes on. Heterogeneous is one of those terms. I rather like the “big H” word, generally defined as a variety of different elements mixed together. It applies to many facets of technology and to life as well.

Maybe it’s because I’m American and adopted, biologically mostly Irish + a dozen others, with an Italian name, raised in a Puerto Rican family in diverse San Jose, California. … Continue Reading

It takes a village – other storage is important

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 0 Comments

Unintentionally, this post continues to have political undertones. About 15 years ago, Hillary Clinton, the current US Secretary of State, wrote a book called, “It Takes a Village.” Clinton presented her vision for the children of America focusing on the impact individuals and groups outside the family have on a child’s well-being. At the time, many argued that the role of parents should not be diminished, but just about everyone can now agree with the idea that many influences are quite positive for the development and support of a child.

But how does this apply to storage …? … Continue Reading

Halftime in America – Drobo for Business in Detroit

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 0 Comments

Last week: 39-minute flight from Toronto to Detroit and 2 days of high-density meetings in Detroit metro. No longer in the top 10 in North American business, the perception is that business is down in the motor city, even though 7.6% growth was enough fro GM to be the world’s top-selling automaker in 2011. Anywhere data is growing is a place where users are looking for newer, more advanced ways to store their data. It’s not just about lowering cost; the ability to storage massive amounts of data supports innovation and evolution in all types of organizations.

Without the capacity for new applications, innovation is inhibited. I was very excited to validate several ways Drobo users are accelerating innovation by harnessing massive amounts of information they otherwise could not feasibly store and protect.… Continue Reading

Backup appliances officially overtake tape … really

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 2 Comments

The decline of tape and rise of disk-based backup has been trending in the press a decade+, though only very recently has the worldwide market for backup appliances actually overtaken tape, wow! Drobo agrees with the movement, internally revenue from our business products overtook that of our professional products, in part because we help customers make the transition from tape to disk backup. IDC is behind the appliance news, and Storage Newsletter has a good summary of the data. … Continue Reading

You can’t save money on storage for less-critical applications unless …

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 0 Comments

3^rd post here, cadence of solution-oriented discussion and analysis of real-world use cases underway! Part 3 of 3 on tiering storage among devices, here are the remaining 5 ideas:

5. Test & Development – Very important to stage & test, but almost impossible to have an exact replica environment that is not production, especially with virtualization the infrastructure does not have to match.… Continue Reading

10 great ways big companies are using Drobo to tier storage and save $$$

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Mario Blandini • 2 Comments

Hi, Mario @ Drobo, my first post here, looking forward to bringing solution-oriented discussion and analysis of real-world use cases to the Drobo blog!

These days, “tiering” is most often associated with mixing solid-state drives and different types of hard disk drives in a system. Drobo has super tiering technology for our model B1200i with Automated Data Aware Tiering, which automatically accelerates transactional and mixed-workload applications; no tuning or configuration required. A lot to talk about here in future posts. … Continue Reading

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