Drobo freezes 10.7 Lion Server

The problem really seems to be in the Drobo Dashboard software 2.0.x. The funny thing was that everything was pretty stable under the old Drobo Dashboard version, but as soon as I upgraded, that was when the problems started. With 2.0.x however, I've been having horrible problems with iSCSI on one set of MacPros, and constant unmounting of drives on another MacPro. When I uninstall Drobo Dashboard, transfer speeds are up and it is actually stable with many multi-gigabyte file transfers.

The thing that *really* upset me was the Drobo tech support person made me feel as if I were the *only* person having these problems. I told him that I really, really had a hard time believing that.

Wecome to the group I reported my issues over a week ago and there have been numerous others here who have done just the same. When I called in I was told I was the only one as well. Seeing how we are more than a week into this thread with numerous individuals either the tech is clueless, not sharing infromation with each other or they are lying through their teeth. I am betting on the later which is a shame as I swore by this company and a lot of people I know bought their products on my recommendation. I will no longer refer people to Drobo anymore.

Indeed. I am running 2 Drobo Pros, 5 1st and 2nd generation Drobos and a Drobo S hooked up to 6 different MacPros and the problems are on all of them with Drobo Dashboard 2.0. I've also recommended Drobos to others, but am going to have a tough time with that in the future unless Drobo can get their act together. Telling me that I was the only one having the problem is almost *always* a lie.

Also, the eSATA card that Drobo suggests I buy from Sonnet does not show the drive up on Drobo Dashboard. The funny thing is that everything worked with the previous version of Dashboard. What's up Data Robotics?

I don't think 2.0.x is the issue. I was still on 1.7.3 when I first started experiencing the problems. I only upgraded to 2.0.x because Drobo support confidently told me it would fix all issues (which obviously it didn't).

Though I've not had support outright say I am the only one with the issue, they have responded as if I am, and there seems to be a refusal to accept that this is not the case. One even claimed it was an issue with my FireWire cable, I pointed them at this thread and said it was unlikely everyone's FireWire cables had spontaneously stopped working when upgrading to Lion.

So far I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that they're not lying but just their support system means that this isn't getting flagged as a widespread problem. It certainly seems that the first line of support merely suggest a standard set of solutions, and it takes a while to get your case escalated to someone slightly more capable of thinking for themselves.

Our various Lion (and Lion Server, obviously) macs all are really slow or even hang when accessing our Drobo FS running the latest firmware (1.2.0) over AFP.

Copying files over SMB works with no problems. I'm so fed up with the Drobo FS being unreliable and their updates/fixes coming slowly that all I want is to copy the data off so I can be done using it -- and using SMB works for that!

SUCCESS! I got my Drobo Elite to connect via iSCSI last night. 😍

Here's what I did.

Download Lion Server Admin Tools http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1419

(It's not included in the standard Lion Server install)

Launch it and log the Server Admin app (located in HD/Applications/Server/). Go to Services. Turn Firewall On. Click Save.

Click on Firewall in the left hand column with the green dot. Go to the Advanced tab and turn off everything. Click Save. Then click back on your server name (blue globe in the left hand column). Go back to Services and turn off Firewall.

Reboot your Drobo Elite and launch Drobo Dashboard. After a few moments, mine magically appeared! (My Drobo Elite is using its default network settings. And my Mac Network system pref is set to DHCP)

So even though I had Firewall turned off in the System Preferences, there seems to be some blocked ports that are hidden from the user. The Server Admin app exposed those blocks so I could turn them off. I don't know which particular port Drobo needed, and I'm sure unblocking these ports can make your Lion Server less secure. But I have a trusted small workgroup and internet firewall is handled by my WiFi router.

I am happy for you but I am not sure you are out of the woods just yet. Please follow up with this thread in a couple of days and let us know if your Drobo remains connected. I have had my Drobo Pro connect via iSCSI however it mysteriously drops off sporadically and requires the MacPro to reboot to come back up. I would also make sure you have a secondary backup of your Drobo's contents. With my Drobo constantly dropping off I almost lost my 12TB partition but after hours of the Disk Repair utility I was able to recover it. That was the worst 2hr wait fo my life, I thought I lost everything. I will not plug my unit back in via iSCSI until Drobo and half of this community says they are no longer experiencing problems with their iSCSI connected Drobo.

I agree with @TechUnplugged. Not being able to connect to the Drobo via iSCSI at all is an entirely different issue than what is being discussed in this thread. What you saw was probably a messed up firewall config that prevented to connect to Drobo completely.

The problem at hand however is that once you are connected, the connection is completely unreliable, dropping off all the time, which confuses Mac OS X so bad that it starts freezing (and other bad symptoms).

I have never had any problems with connecting to the Drobo in the first place. But I do have problems keeping that connection stable. And that's what this thread is all about.

UPDATE:

I have received a replacement unit from Drobo as they were sure the problems are hardware related and they have suggested my DroboPro to be broken.

Needless to say that the replaced unit has the same issue.

If they are sending out replacement units when this issue occurs, it either means they really don't have a clue or they are very desperate to remove some customers from the support queue at least temporarily (after all, replacing a unit with all the shipping involved takes time).

My frustration level has just been increased.

Definitely iSCSI is not working. The apple kernel logs on my machine are showing lots of connection errors during a session and the Drobo is not usable with this interface right now.

Additionally using Lion drivers from two different eSATA vendors that I use, my Drobo S (using eSATA) also disappears after a short while and is not usable. One of the vendors is on the vendor list from Drobo.

I went through resetting my PRAM. (unplug everything except a keyboard directly into USB and the monitor, restart holding down Command, Option, P and R for two chimes). Once this was done I seem to have a reasonably stable FW800 connection from both units. I say reasonably as I have had only a single beach ball in the last three days.

USB also works but is way too slow.

Having a replacement unit is probably not going to help as you point out. Either the firmware or the Dashboard or both need defects fixed and a new release asap. It is hugely frustrating I agree. I have spoken to the Drobo support team twice so far - dont know how close they are to finding the problem.

But having purchased DroboCare as well as the units it is not a good experience. I have received one human email response, one person called me. And I called them. So for my money right now I am also feeling let down and upset by the situation.

UPDATE:

Interesting response from a tier 2 engineer. They are now saying that we should use an application called Time Tamer when using Lion for some models of Drobo: http://support.drobo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/609/kw/time%20tamer

Same all around, but really... try uninstalling the Drobo Dashboard software. It's working wonderfully for me right now. Very fast, very stable *without* the Drobo Dashboard software. As soon as I install it, everything gets wonky.

I thought the Drobo Dashboard is necessary to place limits on how much data is written on the drive itself.

Example: You set the Drobo to hold 16TB of hard drive space, but you only install 8TB of physical HD in the Drobo unit itself. OS X without the Drobo Dashboard sees a 16 TB Drobo, and theoretically could try to write 16 TB of data on the unit. Worse yet, the Drobo is a type of RAID drive, so you could never attain 16 TB of HD space, right?

Sigh. My Drobo Pro is unconnected, gathering dust until this problem gets solved. I got the Drobo Pro specifically for the iSCSI interface. It's an expensive brick right now.

Now I am really starting to get ******. After I told Drobo Support yesterday that the replacement unit they sent me doesn't solve the problem, they suggested I delete all data from the unit and factory reset it. ***? Can you believe that?

They also suggested I use a third party iSCSI initiatior. Either the free GlobalSAN initiator (which is NOT Lion compatible yet - they just ignore that) or the 200 US$ Atto initiator.

HEY DROBO: F*ck you!

My DroboPro is 1.5 years old. I will budget for a replacement backup system, with a different company. I was hoping not to have to do this for 3-5 years after the purchase.