Drobo Pro Issues: Setting Up Additional Volumes

Problem
The first time I added an additional volume, I had a lot of problems! Though it's quite possible that it's because I didn't read the manual.

Aside
Due to my Drobo Pro not mounting the drive when I connect it on Firewire 800, I use iSCSI on gigabit Ethernet. (Windows 7 Ultimate)

Problem Cont'd
With that being said, on my Ethernet connection, I attempted to add a new Volume using the DroboPro dashboard.  Everything appeared to be running fine, I filled in the forms to set the volume format, and size of drive I wanted to setup.  I setup the new volume for 16TB, which is possible due to Drobo supporting thin provisioning.  I don't actually have that space, but since it allows for such volume settings, I decided to set it.  Note, this was not the problem.

After I finished filling in the forms, and confirmed that I wanted the process to proceed, the problem came when the dashboard reported that it could not format the drive because it was in use.  It instructed me to close down any programs that may be using it, and then said it would reboot Drobo and resume with formatting.  It seemed to be going well, but then the dashboard just hung... it later timed out, and reported that it needed to cancel the operation because Drobo was being accessed by a program.

Debugging
1. I attempted a full reboot of my computer, and a reboot of Drobo.  It didn't fix the issue.
2. I attempted to shutdown any process from Task Manager that didn't appear to need to be running.  It still didn't work.

Suspicions of the Problem and Possible Solution
I started to suspect that the iSCSI initiator was the program that the Dashboard was talking about.  I didn't have much knowledge of the iSCSI initiator, except that it is a program that runs on the computer that talks to Drobo.  So, after 2 hours of failed attempts on iSCSI, I shut down Drobo, disconnected the iSCSI interface, and then connected Drobo to my computer via USB 2.0. 

Solution Found
Guess what?!  on USB 2.0, it worked!!  I don't know if this was in the manual, and I still don't, but I'm really glad I found out what the heck was going on.  They should have programmed a smarter Dashboard, that is, it should be able to detect what interface Drobo is connect by, and message to the user that they should be using USB in order to add new volumes. You would think this would be by default, seeing how Drobo is quite advance, but you'd be wrong. It sure would have saved me a lot time iand from getting a headache if they did.

Conclusion
So, lesson learned, when administrating volumes in Drobo Dashboard, one should be using the USB connection cable.  :0)