Just for interest:

http://www.nexsan.com/products/products/ataboy2/ataboy2.html

I was quoted ~20K USD before discounts for a full 1.6TB 3U shelf.

Given the 12TB starting point, the head and software and incremental discount as you get bigger/more of them I'd say the R100 is fairly decent value.

The opening markedroid babble made me think it was an HSM product which I've hoped NetApp would consider doing for a long time. Sadly it's just a backup staging area that could make a decent high-capacity straightforward filer for many people.

Nice start into a developing storage niche though.