Drobo Qualifies OCZ's Enterprise Class Talos SAS Solid State Drives

Drobo made a couple of announcements today, the first one being that it plans to deploy OCZ's Talos Series SAS solid state drives (SSDs) in its business-class storage systems. Specifically, OCZ's Talos drives will be integrated into Drobo's B1200i iSCSI SAN solutions aimed at small-and-medium businesses (SMBs).

"Drobo is a leader in data storage products for both professionals and businesses and we are thrilled that they have qualified and selected our enterprise-class Talos SAS SSDs for their business oriented solutions," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "This collaboration is a perfect example of how our SSD technology can act within a complete solution to deliver superior application-optimized storage for small- and medium-business IT."


The tiered storage solution will consist of OCZ Talos 3.5-inch SAS 6Gbps SSDs in 200GB capacities shoved inside Drobo's 12-bay B1200i SAN. It will support up to three Talos SSDs, which users can install with little fuss. Starting in late April, business customers will be able to pick up a B1200i SAN solution decked out with nine 2TB hard drives and three 200GB Talos SSDs for a around $18,000, or about $3,000 more than a system with a dozen hard drives.

Drobo also announced that it has certified a new hybrid cloud storage solution with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Users of the above-mentioned B1200i, as well as B800i users, will be able to send point-in-time snapshots to Amazon's S3 cloud for offsite disaster recovery purposes.