Excellent thread. I was very close to buying a Drobo several days ago, but chose not to. There are many excellent advantages to it. But two main reasons pushed me away:
1) Encrypted logs. I think it is crucial to have readable log files to be able to understand what is happening with the drive array. If there is proprietary information that the company wishes to be protect, I welcome them to do so. There should be two files: one which is plaintext with the major status and event messages, and one which is encrypted with their proprietary information. Rolling the plaintext log into the encrypted log seems like a user-hostile posture.
2) Maintenance costs. If the log files are encrypted, then when the array fails (not "if", "when") then I will need to buy drobocare ($129) to get them to read the logfile to tell me what happened. I expect to keep this array running for the next 4-6 years, and I am not willing to buy ongoing yearly maintenance ($250/three years) just find out how the array is doing.
Like I said, I was hours away from ordering a drive, I really like the simplicity of the design, but thanks to some of the comments on this thread I suddenly realized that I would signing up for years of maintenance fees.
That's not what I wanted.