In our last video we showed how to set up and configure Drobo's new DroboSync capability on our Drobo B800fs. As with all things Drobo it just worked. DroboSync was incredibly simple and easy to configure and it has proven to be very reliable in operation. We have been replicating data to our DR Drobo B800fs for months now.

Reliable operation is important because disaster recovery is called on to work when the pressure is high and if a simple and easy operation means an unreliable recovery then you might as well not have DR in the first place. In this test drive we put DroboSync to the test and I'm happy to report that the actual recovery is even easier than the initial setup.

Our first DR test for DroboSync was a simple file recovery from the DR box. You might need to do this for a couple of reasons, either your primary Drobo B800fs has failed or you could use it to recover a corrupted file. The later use case is an interesting use of the replication capabilities. The replication interval can be set in a range of 2-24 hours. As long as you catch the corruption in that time you can copy the prior version of the file back to its original location.

As I said earlier, operation of the replication function has been flawless. We have been syncing from our primary Drobo B800fs for several months now with no issues. Replication happens in the background automatically, we don't have to think about it or monitor it. In the SMB this is very important since the "IT Guy" often has many other tasks going on and won't have the time to baby sit a DR job. For example we have lost power several times and our WAN connection went down a couple of times, each time DroboSync found its partner and resumed replication.

As the video below shows we were able to "accidentally" delete a file from our primary Drobo B800fs. All we had to do was mount a share from the DR B800fs and drag the file back to the original location on our primary Drobo B800fs with no problem at all. I can't think of how it could have been easier.

In our next test we will power off our primary B800fs and show how to promote the DR Drobo B800fs to be the primary NAS.

Drobo is a client of Storage Switzerland

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