[Guide] Direct Attached Storage (DAS) - Add up to 16 3.5" drive bays to an existing server for less than $300

Hi guys. Does this require the drives to be SAS drives? Or is the SAS only for the connection between the server and the DAS array?

You can use SAS or SATA drives.

This looks perfect for my needs - will use a Lian Li PC-80 for this.

Can’t really source those caselabs cages. I am looking at these for budget buy:

Any thoughts? I probably wouldn’t even put a fan in it as my Lian-Li has 3 x 14cm fans covering the entire front of the case.

Looking at building a DAS and had a couple questions. My thought was use a 9200-8e with 8088 cable to the external port of the hp sas expander and then use breakout cable from the expander to the drives. To power the hp expander,using a mining pcie adapter since they have 6 pin to sata adapters and then use a psu test switch to power on the machine. My main server uses freenas so assuming the 9200 can be flashed to IT mode(it needs that firmware?), is this a viable setup for having one cable to connect the boxes?

Personally, I would recommend using either the LSI 9202-16e or 9206-16e, as they have much higher maximum bandwidth.

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I was looking on that thread and apparently didn’t read it well enough. Other than switching to that in the main server, does everything else work or would I need to come up with a different setup?

Would this cable be what I need (https://www.amazon.com/CableDeconn-External-SFF-8644-SFF-8088-3-3FT/dp/B00XQTRQJ0/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=sff-8644+cable&linkCode=sl2&linkId=c855c55332a3864aa472f23e9415f82f&qid=1592838526&sr=8-5&tag=serverdiscord-20) to connect the 9206 to the expander?

How do I connect SAS drives from the server to the DAS? I currently purchased the external sas cable to sata connection but I have SAS hard drives.

Edit: No I think I’ve got it wrong a SAS cable will go into a sata drive just fine but not the other way around.

One thing I’ve learned from googles that I hadn’t previously thought of…

Say you have an old board (namely one with ipmi)…you could use that as a JBOD controller even without ram/cpu. I do think the paper clip on the power supply works just fine as well but if you wanted more control over the network an old board w/ipmi (hopefully non-java) would work great for that purpose on a DAS.

Then have a pcie raid card (internal and external ports) plugged in for a clean install passing thru the data to the drives. And of course a power button could be used or ipmi at that point. You wouldn’t get much features out of ipmi without a functioning stick of ram/cpu though consuming power.

The LSI card listed in the original post of this thread.

You can also reference this thread below for more info.

I have the LSI 9201-16e in, I have that card in my dell t110 ii and I am running the external sas cable to my das. The issue is I have sas drives in my rosewill 4u. Do you recommend that I move everything to the Rosewill 4500, meaning would that be easier?

or is it a cable that goes from the lsi card to sas drives instead of the one listed above that goes to sata?

What is the issue exactly? You haven’t specified.

I need a cable that runs into the DAS from the NAS to connect to my 3 SAS hard drives. The cable listed above is for SATA. My bad

(FYI: I would like to preface this comment by saying that I am not specifically recommending any of the parts listed below, they might be great or they might not be, they were simply the first listings I found that were representative of what you need. Please do your own research in order to find equivalent products that may offer better prices or reviews. Thank you)

Based on the SAS HBA that you are using, I would say that you need a SFF-8088 to SFF-8482 cable like the one below to connect your SAS card to the drives in your DAS.

Alternatively, If you want a slightly cleaner look when you are finished you can also use a setup like the following.

Use a cable like this one (SFF-8088 → SFF-8088) to connect your SAS card to the adapter card listed below.

Install an adapter (SFF-8088 → SFF-8087) like this one in your DAS.

Then you can use a standard internal SAS cable (SFF-8087 → SFF-8482) like the ones listed elsewhere on this forum (also below) to connect the adapter card to the drives in your DAS.

I hope that helps

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Makes perfect sense. Thanks

With JBOD, if you have a disk failure, do you just lose data contained to the failed drive or do you lose data on multiple drives?

Also, would Windows see this as a giant singular hard drive or would you need to use Storage Space to achieve that?

With JBOD you only use the information on the disk that failed. And yes, if you want to use Windows for your storage, you would need to use Storage Spaces, or another third party solution like StableBit DrivePool, to make the drives show up as a single array.

Have you looked into Unraid at all? Most of us here use it, and love it.