Drobo freezes 10.7 Lion Server

Changing to USB has also worked for me.

My Drobo S is working fine via Firewire 800 to my Lion (not server) updated Core 2 Duo iMac.

My Drobo FS is hosed and will not mount it's time machine share. It will mount other shares. On shut down, connected clients that have tried to get to the share just hang at the gray screen.

A tier 3 tech at Drobo I have been working on the Drobo FS issues did say to me they are working with Apple on updated firmware and fixes within the next update version of Lion (10.7.1). He is in contact with Drobo engineering and expects patches from Apple and Drobo in the next few weeks to fix this.

Drobo has been great to work with but I do think they are getting slammed with questions related to the Lion update and Drobo.

I have a Drobo 2nd gen (FW 800) hooked to a Mac Mini Snow Leopard Server. Stll works and I think I will wait for the dust to settle before updating it. I use a non-Drobo as a time machine drive on my network. It is seeing more use with the FS out of comission.

Doesn't look like a clean re-install was the answer. I just had another freeze while Time Machine was doing a backup

I thought a quick recap might help..

For the FS you need to upgrade to the latest dashboard and the latest firmware. This shoudl correct the Time macnine capatability issue.

or the 2nd generation drobo. It apears something with the firewire not playing well. For now changing to USB is the only answer. Drobo inc. (they are no longer Data Robotics) is aware of the issue and awaiting Apple for a fix as thsi seems to be occuring with other firewie devices.

I have intentinally left versions out of this post as I expect some changes still to come.

I hope this helps..

On the DroboFS, even the latest firmware and Dashboard do not allow Time Machine volumes to mount or work under my Lion install. Have Drobo Tier3 looking at it, having created a few diagnostic reports and sent in kernel/system logs.

On my side, same problems and Drobo said 3 times in a row that "Drobo Firmware is not in any way the problem" referring to an article somewhere on the internet...

What I see is that the firmware 1.2.0 makes my FS not working as expected for my Lions and Snow Leopard macs.

But the problem only occurs with Time Machine Shares.

With the normal shares it works fine. Even with AFP.

What I saw is that I'm not able to mount at all a TM share, from the Finder nor Drobo Dashboard (a thing you should never use anyway). But finally I discovered one thing : it's because there is a LOT of data in mac sparse bundle image file. So I made a new empty share, with TM activated, and it mounted in a second ! Amazing !

Actually I'm testing a thing : I named my TM share to same name_OLD, created a new share, with the name I wanted, then applied settings (all on the dashboard). Then I go to my drobo in the finder, open the TM share that is empty, and then go to TM preferences and select the new disk. This way it was doing the backup quite fast. But I wanted to try to reuse my previous one !

So I just select the disk, in TM preferences, then while it says I have 120 seconds before backup I went into a terminal window and connected to my drobo. I used the mv command like :

mv Shares/iTimeOLD/MyComputer.sparebundle Shares/iTime/

It took a nano second to move the file there.

Now my backup is mounting the share, and it took time but I know from the past the my big backup (1.5TB) needs a lot of time to be read the first time so I'll let it work some hours and see. But at least, my system works, my TM preferences aren't freezer, and my finder did not crashed... One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind ...

UPDATE : After 10 minutes it's a step later... never gone so far since 1.2.0 is out. I cross my fingers 🙂

I read a post on another site about networked drives being ejected in Lion, and suggested turning off Spotlight under System Preferences for the affected drive.

Since I turned Spotlight off for my Drobo Pro networked via iSCSI to my iMac, my Drobo has not been spontaneously ejected, and my iMac has not had another crash.

I'm not doing Time Machine backups to Drobo, however. I'm running the latest Drobo firmware and dashboard software.

I tried turning off Spotlight on the DroboPro volume long ago, and while it helped reduce the number of drop outs, it did not make the problem go away.

If you put enough stress on your Drobo volume (either through a lot of Spotlight indexing or by using it as a time machine destination for example), it will drop out. Even with Spotlight disabled.

It also depends a lot on which version of Dashboard you are using. I found the older 1.7.x version to be much more robust and resulting in a lot less drop outs then newer dashboard versions. 2.0.x is completely unusable for me.

I too am having problems with iSCSI and DroboPro. I have a support ticket in with them and they are dumb founded. They stated that I am a unique case and have not heard of anyone else having similar problems under Lion. I have had my DroboPro since it was released and never had a problem until I upgraded to Lion. Even on a clean install the DroboPro will disappear from the Dashboard but still be listed in finder. However if you try and open a folder that was not opened before it droppped it will just show it as empty. After the system is rebooted it will work properly for a while then mysteriously drop again with no ryhm or reason other than I think it being under a heavy load. I almost lost all my data with corruption when the DroboPro dropped in the middle of a write and I spent hours on a repair praying that I could get my partiotion back, lickily for me I did. Now here is the kicker, they want me to use a thrid party initiator which basically absolves them from any responsability should something bad happen. I spend this kind of money on their product and want to risk my 12TB of data with a thrid party driver that they will not support? Umm someone over there needs to get their act together and address this problem ASAP. Here is the portion of the email sent to me the other day:

Dear John,

Well since you have gone that far then we can pretty much rule out everything except the firewall and dashboard. Please verify that the firewall is off.

If it is off then the next step it to try the GlobalSAN initiator. Please take a look at the following KB article and let me know your thoughts:

http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/600/kw/globalsan

Thanks!

Don S.

Technical Support Agent

Drobo

866-426-4280

@TechUnplugged: Exact same symptoms here and exact same stupidity on Drobo's end. I think they are loaded with cases like this and just don't know how to deal with it. They did not recommend using the GlobalSAN initiator to me (which, by the way, is not compatible with Lion, so that recommendation in itself is ridiculous).

Only solution right now seems to be moving the DroboPro to a USB or FW800 port. I've done that and have had no issues since. Of course it's slow now, but better slow than risking data loss.

I received a replacement unit today from Drobo but haven't tried it yet. Because I am sure it's not a hardware issue. We'll see. Should the new unit work fine I will report back.

I'm having problems connecting my Drobo Elite to Lion Server. Dashboard just won't see them unless I connect via USB (but they can't transfer data over USB).

My Elites were working fine under Lion. But when I installed Server, I can no longer mount them. I can mount them fine on other Snow Leopard (non-server) Macs. I've even gone so far as to completely reset one Elite (erasing all data) and it's still not visible to Dashboard.

Firewall is off, uninstall / reinstall latest version of Dashboard. All firmware is up-to-date. Can't think of any reason it won't mount.

So the problem seems squarely on Lion Server. It's shut down a service or port I need?

Hmmmm.... just thought of something. VPN is turned on.

Exactly the same problems here. DroboPro intermitently disconnects and drops connection (using iSCSI) and the Drobo S unit that I used for Time Machine is unable to perform any backups.

All are at the latest firmware and dashboard versions recommended.

I basically have two expensive bricks with lots of valuable information on them (my media on one, and the backup on the other). Luckily I am also paranoid and maintain a HDD backup of all of my data.

But the most frustrating thing is despite raising tickets with Drobo and having purchased DroboCare (24x7 support etc) I have only received machine-automated responses.

It appears no-one cares or cares to make a statement about the issue at Drobo. Unfortunately this has been my experience with them in the past and it looks like it will continue in the future.

Love the idea of SoftRAID, but it appears that every step of the way I suffer pain with upgrades.

And the upgrade to Lion Server - don't even get me started on that. Combine these two and I have obviously elected for a world of hurt. But a shiny georgeously designed world of hurt. 😢

just as a FYI counterpoint, i've not had *any* problems with my system:

Mac Mini (2009) upgraded to Lion (non-server), with Drobo (v2) connected via FW800 (DD 2.0.3), and holding 2 TimeMachine backups for the Mini & an occasionally-connected Macbook Pro.

The problems we are having are primarily with iSCSI interface on the DroboPro

I have just swapped my Gen2Drobo over to a new MacMini running Lion Server. I set the Drobo as the destination in Server->Time Machine. I am currently running a TM backup from another machine (iMacDuo) to the Drobo. It seems to be working... but... the iMacDuo machine was previously backed up using TM to the same Drobo. Now, it looks like TM is doing a FULL new backup. Has Lion Server created a "new" location (which I cannot see on the Drobo, by the way - is it invisible)? Confused...