Only yesterday we were singing the praises of the Data Robotics Drobo S, perfect if you need local, redundant storage for your workstation, and today the company have outed their NAS version. The Drobo FS – or “Drobo File Server” – takes the Drobo S and swaps that model’s USB/eSATA/FireWire for an gigabit ethernet port on the back, meaning you can share files protected using its BeyondRAID system across your network.
While the hardware has changed, the software is also much tweaked to take advantage of the network connectivity. The Drobo FS supports media streaming – using the DLNA and UPnP protocols – and can act as your central iTunes store, as well as a standalone BitTorrent downloader and remote-access. That’s because of DroboApps, a new platform of community-created and community-supported applications that can be loaded onto the Drobo FS.
As for pricing, the new Drobo FS will go on sale – drive-free – for $699, with Data Robotics selling it with up to five 2TB drives for $1,449. It’s expected to hit virtual shelves today.