You should have a look at a Silicon Mechanics[0] and Aberdeen[1]. I know Aberdeen sells re-branded Supermicro chassis, but Silicon Mechanics sells similar products. I've been shopping around for a 36 bay NAS, and both companies seem to offer the best combination of price, quality, and support (Aberdeen has a 5 year warranty). Though if you want to ditch enterprise drives entirely to minimize cost, you should probably go with a Silicon Mechanics system and buy your own drives.
Some quick estimates: You can get a 36 bay server with an attached 45 bay JBOD for about 8.5k [2]. If you use 2TB consumer drives, they'll run about $140 a piece[3]. This comes out to $0.12 / GB, which is a damn good deal, IMO.
[3] WD Caviar Black drives ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?
Item=N82E16822136824 ). You can get WD Greens for $80 a piece, but I don't know how their variable RPM holds up in a RAID.
Agreed. I like Silicon Mechanics, Also used Avadirect in the past, but they weren't as good.
I think the WD's are the way to go. Enterprise-grade drives aren't really much more reliable, and you need to plan capacity assuming they'll fail anyway. Better to get consumer drives that are at least mid-range (avoid Hitachi), and run with it.
Some quick estimates: You can get a 36 bay server with an attached 45 bay JBOD for about 8.5k [2]. If you use 2TB consumer drives, they'll run about $140 a piece[3]. This comes out to $0.12 / GB, which is a damn good deal, IMO.
[0] http://www.siliconmechanics.com/
[1] http://www.aberdeeninc.com/
[2] http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i28693/4u-storage-server.php and http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i19897/4u-45-drive-jbod-sas-...
[3] WD Caviar Black drives ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx? Item=N82E16822136824 ). You can get WD Greens for $80 a piece, but I don't know how their variable RPM holds up in a RAID.