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After completing the first DAS/ SAS Expander JBOD enclosure project I realized that there was a major area of improvement. Using less than 30% of a large 4U case’s volume for useful purposes seemed like the key area to improve upon. As I was completing that build I soon realized that I wanted a secondary server to be able to access some of the drives for EXSi or Hyper-V virtual machines. Further, NAS operating systems that run poorly in virtual machines, such as unRaid require dedicated server for testing. I could have built another server in another enclosure, but I decided that I could improve upon the original design and access drives that are housed in the Big WHS ecosystem through a simple cable swap. This eliminates the need to physically move drives from enclosure to enclosure. The following is a slightly (approximately $20) more expensive version of the original Build Your Own JBOD DAS Enclosure with a HP SAS Expander iteration. 

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This week the Big WHS underwent a major change and dropped the Asus motherboard in favor of a Supermicro one. Apparently the Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer motherboard does not like the HP SAS Expander at all. I could not find a card that could see the SAS Expander. This all culminated when I finally took the working setup out of the Gigabyte H55 board and couldn’t get it to work in the Asus. For those wondering, yes, it was a $200 motherboard/ CPU with 36 raid ports + another 5 onboard and 1 esata. Windows Home Server v1 can only support 32 drives so that is a lot of connectivity at about $660!

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