That system is a tower system, so I think it is 4u. SM makes a similar model to rackmount. The lower portion is for intake, but looking at it, it should be easy to throw some kind of drive mounting assembly in there.
Working with both sata and scsi, I prefer scsi for speed, but sata for size and noise. When recomending storage to customers, it all depends on the application they will be using. If they need high speed in a single system scsi all the way, if they don't mind a storage expansion cabinet, sata on the low end fibre channel on the high end. Equalogic makes a really impressive sata san box that is very close to or equal scsi speed. Most of our high end video editing customers and simulation systems use scsi due to the reliability and speed.