Has Drobo hinted at Apps coming for the 5N?
They’re coming, but not available yet (unless you migrate in an FS diskpack with the apps already enabled on it). No timeline has been given.
As far as I can tell from digging around on the 5N’s firmware, DroboApps support is exactly the same as before. What has changed is the compiler needed to create the apps, and that the Dashboard hides the option to enable the apps.
The workaround is to create a diskpack on an FS with DroboApps enabled (I suggest having SSH and sudo installed as well), and then migrate that to the 5N.
From having the 800FS (for business) … I remember DroboApps being a little bit lackluster … is it still true? I’ve been with DRI since the beginning (original Drobo, 2nd gen, 800FS) … but looking at the plethora of app options on Synology makes it a bit enticing … 
… but I really like the UX of DRI products better. sigh …
It depends on what you mean by lackluster. If you mean not as user-friendly to install as the Synology, then you are absolutely right. If you mean diversity, then I beg to differ. 
The lack of user-friendliness is what Drobo’s working on for their official re-release of Apps. Apparently they noticed that the original FS apps largely worked as-is on the 5N, so they left the original infrastructure in place for those of us who depend on it. No better or worse than before, although the underlying hardware is just so much better.
No kidding… I found out yesterday that the FS has the same CPU as the DroboShare, whereas the 5N has a CPU that is supposed to be used in enterprise-class servers 1.
I’m guessing that they’ll be available very, very soon. On February 13, Sky (a forum admin), posted in the 5N forums about very “sweet” news coming our way on February 14. It only stayed up for a few hours and then was deleted.
This morning, Drobo has announced a partnership with Copy to add cloud storage to our 5Ns ( http://www.drobo.com/news/press-releases/2013/press_release_2013_02_20.php ) . Cool in and of itself, however the press release states “The Copy application for the Drobo 5N is expected to be available in March 2013”. Hard to do that without official app support.
Indeed. That is exciting! The Register picked up on this also.
Barracuda has credibility with businesses. I hope this opens a lot of doors for Drobo.
Ah, good to see the Copy announcement was made official. I’ve been using it a bit recently - honestly not too dissimilar from Dropbox and Box.net - but the Drobo 5N integration will certainly tip the scales for me. Looking at my Copy account, it appears that the standard account is 100GB - quite generous, unless I’m missing a catch somewhere.
And here I was happy with the free 5GB personal account (terms mention 2GB, they must’ve increased the limit at some point), hehe.
The Copy DroboApp for the 5N has officially been announced. We are showing it in our daily prosumer live demos; you can register for one at www.drobo.com/thunderbolt. We also have more information available at www.drobo.com/copy. Enjoy!
A big thank you to bhiga for pointing out the problem with my links, so we’ll try this again:
The press release also says 5GB. As I haven’t actually used any significant space yet, it’s entirely possible I’m reading something wrong or there’s a bug on their website. 100GB certainly sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
According to what I see on the pricing page from my end, 100GB for the base Company level at $399/year for unlimited users is not bad at all.
Personal 250GB for $99/year is pretty sweet too.
The Copy app is a nice feature for the 5N, but it’s a shame you can’t sync a complete Drobo with this service, only a shared folder as big as your Copy account.
Synology has their Cloud Station App, what seems to enable you to see your Drobo from the outside and use it just like a Dropbox account, but I can’t seem to find if there are any limitations to this as well…
Is it just me or do those 2 URLs (see below) not work? I can’t register.
Sorry, I’m going to be a pain and ask a probably obvious question…
As of yet a new diskpack in a 5N currently doesn’t have the option the enable drobo apps (unless obviously I migrate an FS diskpack over). Correct?
I only ask as while reading through the documentation for Copy on the drobo site there is a step to enable drobo apps through the dashboard.
Thanks as always for any response to this.
Yes.
I think Copy was given access to an early release of the next Dashboard.
Ah, makes sense. Thank you.
DroboApps will be available with the next release of Dashboard and firmware for the 5N. This should happen sometime this month.