> For a 32 HDD system, you expect about 5 drives to fail per year. This takes time to repair and you will need on-site staff (just not 24/7). To account for these costs, we will budget $50 per year per rig.
will you not also lose 6TB (times utilization) of your lockup every time a drive dies?
> 8x 4 way SATA data splitters
you've linked to SAS breakout cables. they don't plug into SATA ports, they plug into SFF-8087 SAS ports.
they cannot plug into the motherboard you've listed. nor have I ever seen one listed for retail sale that has 8 SFF-8087 ports.
the cheapest way to get 8 SFF-8087 ports is with some SAS expander card, and a SAS HBA. even scraping off eBay that's another $50 per host, and two more components to fail.
there are also actual SATA expanders out there, but they last about 3 months before catastrophic failure in my experience.