Holy crap, Data Robotics has just released a DroboPro Elite. It's basically the 8-bay Pro but with two ethernet ports for iSCSI and without Firewire or USB drive access. Without drives, US$3500.

WTF!

Also a new Drobo S 5-bay model, without drives @ US$799. Yeah, that's 2x the price of the 4 bay model. It leverages the 8-bay's ability to have two drives fail safe.

Their NAS adapter doesn't work with the new models and they warn that accessing such volumes over a network would be very slow. Guess they've never seen a NAS from other companies with decent processors pushing over 100Mbytes/sec - which their direct-attached devices can't even manage.

I'm already waiting for payment instructions from a vendor for a ReadyNAS Pro which I hope to order within the next day or two. Still wish it had more than 6 bays, but there's not much I can do about that.