Today, Drobo, a wholly owned subsidiary of StorCentric, is pleased to announce the launch of the new Drobo 8D, Direct Attached Storage (DAS) Solution. The 8D is the first new product launched after the StorCentric acquisition and reflects StorCentric’s commitment to building world-class customer centric storage products. The 8D has the feature set needed to supercharge creative workflows and act as primary storage for SMBs requiring reliable, easy to use, high capacity solutions. Features include:

• 8 Bays, Two Thunderbolt™ 3 Ports
• 128TB Volume Support
• First Drobo With NEW Intelligent Volume Management
• Supports Two, 4K Monitors or One, 5K monitor
• First 8 Bay With Rear Slot Accelerator Bay
• Dual Fans for Cooling Efficiency
• Internal Power Supply

Bigger. Better. Bolder.

The 8D is designed with the Drobo legacy of maintaining a radically simplified storage experience, while keeping the customer requirements in mind. The expanding information growth for end users, and the need for lightning fast speed for data transfer and digital image and video editing is the foundation for the 8D.

The 8D can support volume sizes of up to 128TB with a total storage pool of 256TB. This is the largest capacity for a direct attached Drobo, and the 8D is compatible with the latest 14TB HDDs now available on the market, with room to grow. The 8D intelligently combines both HDDs and SSDs in the front slots to deliver both capacity and performance, as well as Data Aware-Tiering to accelerate both read and write performance. The 8D also comes equipped with a Drobo Accelerator Bay found on the rear panel for SSD use, enabling Hot Data Caching to deliver performance boosts for popular applications such as Apple’s Final Cut, Adobe Lightroom, and Photoshop.

New to the Drobo product line is the Intelligent Volume Management technology available on the 8D. This technology combines the flexibility of manual volume configuration with the convenience of Drobo’s legendary automation, allowing for separation of file systems as customer needs dictate.

“The 8D is the product that our customers have asked for and need,” said StorCentric CEO, Mihir Shah. "The 8D was built on the immense popularity and demand of the 8 bay DroboPro. Creative professionals will experience the editing power for media rich, high resolution workflows, while the simplicity of the 8D will maximize limited resources for SMBs. The self-management features save time and money and provide an affordable entry point for all end users and allows for a ‘pay as you grow’ model for expanding data needs.”

The Power to Transform Workflows

Drobo continues to address the needs of creative professionals who need reliable and scalable storage solutions to back up and edit their data, while utilizing the most current and versatile interface on the market.

“With dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, the new Drobo 8D delivers the performance and speed for today’s demanding creative and data-intensive workflows,” said Jason Ziller, General Manager, Client Connectivity Division at Intel. “We are proud to see Thunderbolt 3 technology continue to offer the fastest, most versatile connection across a breadth of peripheral devices and user experiences.”

With the Thunderbolt 3 ports, the Drobo 8D can be connected to up to five Thunderbolt devices, and the bi-directional performance of Thunderbolt 3 allows all devices in the chain to achieve maximum throughput. The 8D supports one 5K or two 4K displays for a full experience of resolution, contrast and depth for editing detail.

Price and Customer Loyalty Program

The Drobo 8D is available today at an MSRP of $1,299 USD through https://www.drobostore.com and select channel partners.

For a limited time, the 8D includes a free SSD when purchased through the US Drobo Store - www.drobostore.com. Offer ends 11/27/2018.