Kind of frustrating, there seem to be runaway processes. But I switched to 1.6.6 and it all went away. So upgrade if you are Mac now 🙂
Happens on both Firewire and iSCSI on both Mac Mini and iMac. Seems to be related to the Drobo Dashboard and they are recommending downgrading to 1.5x or going to 1.6.6. The symptom is a runaway activitymonitord process. Anyway, I upgraded to 1.6.6 and this seems to help the sluggishness. There is also a long thread about performance issues with the DroboPro being erratic. Going from 70MBps to 3MBps. iSCSI should theoretically do 100MBps (compared with USB at 20MBps and Firewire 800 somewhere in between). There is apparently a firmware update coming (1.1.3 is current version) which addresses this.
As another aside, I’ve tried Drobo on Mac Mini (inconsistent as Mac Mini kept disappearing off the network. Could also only use USB and get a 20MBps performance), but one suggestion from Drobo itself is to use it with an Airport Extreme as a USB disk for minimum hardware utilization. A good suggestion for archival purposes.
DroboPro on Mac OSX 10.6.2 – Kernel Panics and Memory Leaks
I’m running an Intel based Mac Pro (10.6.2) with the latest Drobo Dashboard and DroboPro firmware.
My device was causing all sorts of kernel panics when plugged in via iSCSI which I eventually was able to minimize. However, since the latest Dashboard update, I’ve noticed that after 24-36 hours my Mac Pro becomes sluggish and unusable. The mouse stutters, skips,etc. and the keyboard input is delayed and error prone (keystrokes missing). A reboot solves this for another 24-36 hours.
However, when I unplug the DroboPro (which is connected via dedicated gigabit ethernet) the lag issues disappears.
Is there a memory leak or some sort of performance issue with DD and iSCSI on the Mac? Anyone else experiencing this? Makes the computer unusable when DroboPro is connected and if I didn’t want the iSCSI connection I would have spent the money buying a DroboPro
DroboPro on Mac OSX 10.6.2 – Kernel Panics and Memory Leaks
I’ve since reverted to the earlier 1.5x version to see if this helps. There is another forum thread where Drobo is acknowledging this issue and asking people experiencing it to downgrade drobo dashboard.
DroboPro on Mac OSX 10.6.2 – Kernel Panics and Memory Leaks
The activitymonitord process on a Mac Pro running OSX 10.6.2 used a majority of the CPU cycles after 24 hours when using Drobo Dashboard 1.6.1. This resulted in a substantial performance reduction.
