We have many boards which have both onboard SAS and SATA controllers which you can connect at least 8 SATA HDD with SAS controller, and connect more with onboard SATA, like X8DA3, X8DA6, both of them have two firewire connectors onboard. Alternatively, you may consider other boards that have LSI SAS controller like X8DT6-F, X8SI6-F, X8DTL-3F, X8ST3-F, X8DTL-3, X8DT3-LN4F, X8STi-3F...etc. , and adds an add-on low cost firewire card.