I will try and help with the best of my knowledge I'm sure other more experienced miners will show up with their opinions.
1st) I think instead of using the term Node you are referencing Miners. Especially when you get to talking about your Hashrate. I think the Nodes have more to do with computers running the Bitcoin code (and all the stuff well above my head), or bitcoin core wallets. These make up the network and ensure whatever protocols are supposed to be in place are being followed. The Node stuff I'm not to certain on so I will end that part here and leave it for someone else to explain.
2) I think you have already overshot your budget, The s9's you are talking about I think are currently around 1350 USD or more, not sure I don't run them. So the miners alone for 8 put you over 10K, without factoring shipping, PSU's or taxes and import charges. Maybe scale back to 5 or 6 units. Also make sure you can handle failure rates on equipment, and see how long before you could get units delivered. Have you considered Avalon 741's? They are less efficient and with your higher electrical costs you will want to make sure you can turn a profit.
3) Look into getting Mining specific Power Supply units as these are built for longevity to handle running 24/7
4) Do not solo mine even if you get yourself up to the 8-10 units you will still be a drop of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool, okay maybe 3 or 4 pools. This is especially true if you are trying to show an ROI to attract more investors.
5) I can't help with the remote monitoring of machines as my networking skills are shite, and I haven't needed it yet so I haven't put in the research, but from what I have glanced at it isn't that crazy hard to have set up for you. My pool that I use does actually monitor all connected miners for me which is nice, if 1 goes down it will send me an email alert. Also if you are on the same network as your Miners, which I assume as you said they are in the basement, whe you log into each ones individual IP address you will be able to see how they are performing, I'm sure there is software to monitor all of them at once but I haven't needed it. If you post in the software thread I'm sure someone can help you with that.
6) Where are you located, as you will need to make sure that you are exhausting heat, or using it if it's a cold climate. Not sure that your fan will be able to handle the amounts of heat these miners will be putting out. There are various designs discussed in the threads to help with that.
Good luck
I appreciate your advice regarding the price for s9's I have a supplier from china claiming he could provide each s9 for $1000 although I'm not sure If I should trust him, but I would be willing to shell out $1350 for a s9 what source do you see the s9's selling for $1350 on? I would really appreciate it if you can point out trustworthy source.
Regarding Avalon 741 I'm not to familiar with 741., but I appreciate the advice and definitely will look into the 741.
Regarding nodes sorry about the confusion, I should of used the term miner, although a node can be considered anything that has an ip address.
Yea I'm going to take your advice on staying away from solo mining and joining a few pools. or potentially even running a split test on selling some hashing power.
I'm located in the tri state area so it gets pretty cold here during the winter. Summer get pretty hot though.
BTW one important question I left out do you know the average life expectancy of the S9s assuming the right temperature conditions are met?
