Why can't Lightroom open or create a catalog on a network drive?

I just filled up my external drive and spent over $1300 on a Drobo NAS to find out Lightroom can't open or create a catalog on a network drive? EPIC FAIL!!!!
How do I store over 8 TB of catalogs on my NAS and still be able to access them? Do I need to copy the catalogs and pictures from a local drive to a NAS, then copy them back to my local drive if I ever want to use them?
I can't believe this is the case. There really is no reason you shouldn't be able to store a catalog on a network drive. How do I fix or get around this?

Yes, I really have 8 TB of photography. Its from the past 10 years of dozens of worldwide photography jobs. Granted, not all of it is in Lightroom yet, but much of it is. I used Aperture until Apple abandoned all of its professional software development and have been moving to Lightroom for a while now. Aperture is able to use the NAS as a storage drive, no problem and it uses a database as well, so I really don't see why Lightroom can't do it.
I have an 8 TB Drobo connected by Firewire to my iMac and storing photos on it for Lightroom (and Aperture prior to that) and it works fine. But it's filling up and I wanted some archive storage so I didn't have to have Lightroom catalogs and Aperture libraries on it I really don't use on a regular basis. So I got the Drobo FS800 loaded up with 12 TB of space as a network storage server to make sure everything is safely backed up. I am slowly converting my old Aperture libraries to Lightroom, one at a time as well as using Lightroom for everything I have done for about the last two years.
But it is completely impractical to have to store the pictures and catalog on the NAS Drobo, then have to copy it all over to a local drive if I ever want to find a photograph in on a Lightroom catalog. It will takes hours if not a day to do that, just so I can open it. So I may see if I can store the pictures on the NAS Drobo but keep the catalog on the local Drobo. But I hate the idea of not keeping everything together. It something happens and the shots getting separated from the catalog, I have no idea what will happen or if it will be easy to re-connect the media. I also want to keep a backup of the catalog, but I think the built-in catalog vaults will do that.
But again, Apple's Aperture could keep everything together and has not problem pulling it off a NAS, local drive or anywhere. Really hard to imagine why Adobe can't do the same thing, especially since Aperture is overall so obsolete in every other way to Lightroom by now.  Guess I need to try a few things and see if I can make this work. But really not comfortable splitting catalogs up on different drives than the picture files are located.

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