Drobo freezes 10.7 Lion Server

Just curious if the 10.7.1 update released yesterday helps anyone.

UPDATE:

I received an email from a Drobo Senior Manager, apologizing for the trouble and saying that they are "working feverishly to improve" the iSCSI connector. To me that sounds like the first time they admit that there is a problem.

I complained about lack of communication on the matter and again, he agreed. He asked me to stand by for further communications. Whatever he means by that. I'll keep you posted.

Outstanding. Of course the problem is not just with iSCSI as I got drop out and disconnects with Firewire 800 as well...

And I should mention that eSATA and Firewire 800 work brilliantly well if I uninstall the Drobo Dashboard.

*** BEWARE 10.7.1 ***

After the problems with iSCSI I moved my DroboPro to Firewire 800, which seemed to work just fine (albeit slow). After upgrading OS X to 10.7.1 (from 10.7.0) however, I am seeing loads of disk I/O errors in the system logs and I am no longer able to copy files from the Drobo volume (or to it, for a matter of fact).

This is getting out of hand.

HEY DROBO: **** YOU VERY MUCH!!!!

UPDATE / GOOD NEWS!

After yelling so much at Drobo in the past couple of days and having an extended email discussion with that Drobo senior manager, I received a call from the Drobo CEO today.

He acknowledged all the problems, they are very aware of them by now and promised to deliver a fix in about 30 days. The fix will be an updated Drobo Dashboard (version 2.1) that includes an all new iSCSI initiator. They are completely replacing the previous iSCSI initiator with a new one they licensed from another company. The reason it will take about 30 days to deliver the fix is that they need to implement the new initiator into their Dashboard code. Which takes some time.

They also said that Dashboard 2.1 would fix a lot of other problems. I have no more details on that part though.

They should put up some information about it all on their website in the next couple of days.

At least we now have some perspective and an ETA for a fix.

Really nice to hear. Looking forward to seeing the results and hoping that this little episode of frustration with Drobo is in the past. I love their concept and have purchased *many* Drobos, Drobo Pros, Drobo S, etc... But am close to abandoning the product and concept unless they can get this issue fixed.

Good luck to Drobo and all of us dealing with this issue.

To throw my hat into the ring, I too, suffered from problems with my Drobo Pro (8.5TB of data) as soon as I upgraded to Lion. Drobo told me to use disk utility, disk warrior and then asked me for a bunch of information. I didn't bother responding because I just felt I was getting the stock "customer support" boilerplate and just didn't have time to address it all.

THE PROBLEM: upon upgrading to Lion (and encouraged by the Drobo website affirming Lion compatibility), the drobo pro connected via iSCSI would hang the entire finder. The only solution was rebooting upon which the system would hang shortly thereafter. Time Machine would also hang and generally, this was not working. So I disconnected the Drobo Pro and effectively stopped time machine backups for almost a month.

Browing the drive was impossible.

Time Machine was non functional.

SOLUTION ATTEMPTS:

Disk Utility in Lion would hang and never complete.

Disk Warrior in Lion wouldn't find the drive

All firmware and dashboards were upgraded accordingly

I tried connecting to Firewire 800 vs. SCSI and that did not work.

FINDINGS:

I plugged the Drobo into a Snow Leopard MacBook Pro I have lying around and voila, everything worked perfectly fine.

Ran disk utility: reported no problems.

Ran it again, just in case: no problems.

In SL: Streamed HD video files from the Drobo: no problem

In SL: could browse the Time Machine backups: no problem

THEREFORE: the problem is a conflict with Lion and the Drobo iSCSI and FIREWIRE 800 interface. I haven't tried USB on the Lion MacPro, but frankly, even if it does work, it will not be a good solution for my workflow due to its excruciatingly slow pace. I bought the Drobo Pro for iSCSI interface not the pokey USB.

That's about it. Let's hope they get this thing fixed ASAP. So far, the only Lion-related problem I've had.

-JP

Cryptochrome, thank you for the update.

While I am pleased the CEO made an effort to communicate with someone in the customer base, he's badly missed the mark here. This latest information needed to be prominently displayed on Drobo's support page, not find its way into an obscure discussion forum via a well-intentioned user, and nearly a month after the problems started no less.

The Lion support resource page on the Drobo website is a generally useless mess and Drobo is on the verge of alienating a large portion of its customer base. I attempted to work through customer support and got nowhere, as did many others. Drobo's products are not a luxury for most users, they are a neccessity by nature of their purpose and, as such, many users will move quickly to another option to protect their data. Drobo became part of the problem here, not a solution.

If Drobo wants to keep me as a customer, it should immediately acknowledge a problem exists with Dashboard and Lion (and any other components that are problematic) and that it is performing a fix over a specified time period, and continue to update the process. I'm surprised at how willing Drobo has been to keep its "valued" customers in the dark long enough to lose them.

@snaus I completely agree. And I don't understand why they haven't put something up on the website yet. They told me they are going to do so, the CEO even read me an email from his product manager, who suggested to "immediately inform the customer base through the support website and also get in touch with the Mac press".

Note sure what's wrong with them.

You are NOT the only one. 😟

Hardware: DroboPro (8x3TB) on a MacMini Server and MacPro (with same problems)

Software: Lion Server 10.7.1, Drobo Dashboard 2.0.3

What I've experienced:

1. DroboPro disconnects/restarts under heavy I/O when connected to iSCSI or Firewire on Lion and DD 2.0.3
2. Problem existed in SL running DD 2.0.3 but works fine with SL and DD 1.7.3
3. Drobo Tier 2 Support confirmed that their iSCSI initiator is not Lion compatible
4. Drobo Tier 2 Support recommended GlobalSAN Initaitor even though it's not Lion compatible (***)
5. Running 32 bit Kernel doesn't help

Richard,

Same configuration: DroboPro (8x3TB) *and* DroboPro (8x2TB) *and* DroboS 5x2TB on MacPros, same problems and same experiences.

We must have the same support tech. I got a call today from Drobo and she suggested:

1. Booting my Mac Pro in 32bit kernel mode (it already was)

2. Downloading the free GlobalSAN initiator (she was unaware that it is not Lion compatible)

SOLVED (sort of)

I've been waiting months for Data Robotics to fix their buggy iSCSI initiator software ever since DD 2.0.0 under Snow Leopard and today was my breaking point: I dished out $200 and got the ATTO Xtend SAN iSCSI Initiator.

But you know what? I just finished transfering roughly 2TB at 71 MB/s and no disconnects or restarts under heavy I/O. No -36 errors either. The Xtend SAN iSCSI Initiator WORKS. PERIOD.

It's frustrating to pay extra for a working solution but I've lost confidence in Data Robotics and their ability to fix/integrate a working iSCSI initiator into the next version of Drobo Dashboard.

Here's the link to the ATTO Xtend SAN: http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?scat=17&sku=INIT-MAC0-001

If you're unfamilar with using Xtend SAN, here's what I did:

1. Connect the DroboPro via USB and change the Network settings to a manual IP outside DHCP and subnet. (The DroboPro needs to restart before the settings are saved.) Once it comes back up in Dashboard, shutdown the DroboPro.
2. Uninstall Drobo Dashboard.
3. Install Xtend SAN and restart
4. In Xtend SAN, click on the "Discover Targets" tab and choose "Discover by DNS/IP"
5. Entered the manual IP and port 3260
6. Select the DroboPro in the "Discovered Targets" list and choose "Add"
7. Select the DroboPro in the left column under your host
8. Under the Setup tab, check "Visible" and "Auto Login." Click Save.
9. Under the Status tab, select the DroboPro's IP in the Ports list and click on Login
10. Your LUNs should mount!

@Richard: Try sending the ATTO back and get a refund for it. Because the ATTO initiator is the one that Drobo have licensed and will be included in Drobo Dashboard 2.1.

Greeaaaattttt. I love how Data Robotics is so forthcoming with giving their customers a heads up with what's going on. Oh wait. Yeaaaahhhh.