"The first challenge in putting together the big box was getting internal SAS connectors properly seated into the backplane adaptor sockets"
Excuse me?
As a customer I'd feel slightly uncomfortable about my data by now. You make it sound like stuffing 24 disks into a box is rocket science to you, all the while SuperMicro and others sell plug&play chassis for up to 45 disks[1].
Also, you didn't mention it in the post, but you do have at least two of these in two physically distant racks, right?
[edit: deleted snarky comment about people running windows on a fileserver]