For Sale: Storage Robot (Drobo)

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Over the summer I purchased a Drobo “storage robot” from Data Robotics for my home server/media center. It is a four-bay USB storage device that accepts any number and combination of SATA drives to build a larger virtual volume which can be used on either OS X or Windows. I intended to write about my experiences (receiving it the day before they upgraded the product, a bad first unit, some early driver bugs, etc.) but never got around to it.

In spite of some of my earliest experiences I am quite a fan of the device and have not regretted the purchase (only the timing). It is a flexible and well-performing method for keeping my pile of data safe with plenty of elbow room.

Why am I selling it you ask? The truth is, I’m not a typical user. The system it is attached to serves numerous roles. It is the server for our peay.us domain (web, mail, DNS, etc.) and also the home media server (iTunes, iPhoto, file server, and El Gato EyeTV DVR). The end result of all of this disk I/O is that when EyeTV is recording a show from the USB TV tuner and writing to the USB storage while other disk activity is going on (home directory syncing or Time Machine backup), it will often skip frames. That makes for a very annoying viewing experience. If the disk is idle and just recording there isn’t a problem and recent firmware updates for the device have helped considerably, but the fact remains I’m expecting server storage performance from a device that was not really designed or intended for such use.

As a result, I decided to purchase a gen 2 Drobo which adds a FireWire interface. Having a dedicated bus for storage will alleviate the problems I’ve been experiencing. Of course, if I had just waited a week before purchasing the original unit, I wouldn’t have had to do this.

To keep our budget in check, I am selling the original one to recoup some of the cost of upgrading it. That means you get to benefit from my bad timing. If you are interested in purchasing it (you’ll have to supply one or more of your own drives), make me an offer. I’d prefer to keep it among my “friends” and family to avoid hassling with eBay or craigslist but am motivated and will sell it one way or another.

Debt is Baaaaad

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Becky and I have been really getting into the concept of living within your means and getting debt free. We are currently doing the Financial Peace University program with others from our church and have been listening to Dave Ramsey for a few years now.

I ran across this YouTube video from the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” which goes into detail how our country and, more specifically, our government, has been engaged in the “spend now-save never” mentality. It does a good job avoiding party finger pointing as the problem really is a universal one and more complex than party politics.

Below is a 30 minute abridged version of the fuller movie. Watch it.

Did I say transition?

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Almost six months to the day from when I started my transition from staff to manager, today marked my first official day as Manager, Information Technology. Four of my peers for the last three years are now my subordinates.

With some interesting timing, I was just down in San Diego yesterday at LISA 2008 taking two management classes (Management 101: Effective Communication Tools for Sysadmins and Management 201: Effective Team Management of System Administrators). As with any training, the test is in the application. In the hopes to make good education effective, I’m going to GTD a few of the better reference slides for regular review in the hopes that it becomes second-nature.

As I know at least a few of my “peeps” read my blog, I want to publicly thank you for your support and understanding. I hope and pray that I am able to be a manager you can trust and respect.