Reddit mentions of CableCreation Dual Mini SAS 26pin SFF-8088 to 36pin SFF-8087 Adapter in PCI Card Bracket

1. Move on to a bigger case (I went from cheap $20 gaming computer case with 6 bays to a $100 case with 12 bays to a $350 case with 24 bays)
   
2. Buy another case and do what /u/AshleyUncia stated
   
3. Buy another case with just the drives, a power supply, and some cards like these: https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B01GPD9QEQ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1542731683&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=sas+card&psc=1 that connect back to your main storage server with some SAS cables
   
4. Run externals connected to the server

I saw some people had issues with their Norco backplanes, but mine has been good. For DAS setup, you'll need a powerboard (or some cheap motherboard should work?) to turn on the power supply?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-CSE-PTJBOD-CB2-Power-Board-for-JBOD-/361966696885?hash=item5446e579b5

The mid fan wall is a little tight to the backplane connectors so I went with the right angled ones.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KFEVQ4E/

I originally bought a Y splitter for the fans, but it was loose fitting, so I swapped it out for one of these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0763FGH6S/

If you want a semi "Professional" look then you'll need a bracket coming out of each case plus cables to connect them externally, plus more internal cables $$$... This is where a DIY DAS starts nickel and diming you. The other option is just running the SFF-8087 cable coming off of the expander thru the cases and snake it into your Proliant+9211 card. With that scenario the expander would have to be secured near the back of the case so a connecting cable would be long enough.
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-Mini-Mini-SAS/dp/B011W2F626/

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA00Y51H7218
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GPD9QEQ/
https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-External-26pin-SFF-8088-Cable/dp/B013G4F3A8/


Another thing is that expander card has dual aggregation, so you can double its speed if you have 2x 8087 coming out of one expander, but then you can only have 16 drive input. I did the math in the past (not sure if it was correct tho), but I think a single link expander will be the limiting factor if you try to run all +16 drives at once. While not an issue for regular access, it would slow down a parity/backup type process that accesses multiple drives at once (Snapraid comes to mind). Of course I guess not an issue if you run this while your sleeping or whatever, but overall 20-24 HDD on one expander should be fine'ish...

You can use whatever sort of enclosure you want. The HDDs (and the rest of the hardware) don't care about enclosures. Enclosures for a DAS are to protect the cables/wires and aid in cooling/controlling airflow. I have a DAS in a mATX case (10 x 3.5 and 6 x 2.5). Use the build I linked above as a guide, but do some shopping and find what fits your build/needs and what might be cheaper. I've seen hard drive cages and psus attached to a piece of plywood and hung on the wall/sitting on shelves being used as a DAS.

Do not use a PCIe SATA adapter. You pay too much per port for one of those. Get an SAS2 Controller Card like the 9201-16e (or a rebranded LSI SAS chipset card). You then use SAS to SATA breakout cables. If you are going straight from the card to the HDDs then you want to make sure you have 8088 SAS to SATA. If you are going to use an adapter like this then you will need an 8087 SAS to SATA forward breakout cables, 8087 to 8087, and 8088 to 8088 cables. Make sure you get forward and not reverse breakout cables.

You can also put an SAS Expander card in the DAS so you only have to run one (or two if dual linking) 8088 cable. SAS Expanders work kind of like a network switch and can be daisy chained for a huge number of hard drives.

Plex will be happier on the SSD and then you can back it up to the pool so you are able to recover easier.

Edit: I've used a PCIe HDD adapter like this to squeeze in more drives to a DAS when I have available PCIe slots on the chassis, but I also use SSDs (hence the need for 2.5 drive slots) for pool cache, temporary stuff, transcodes, and virtual machines. I'm not using OMV so I'm not sure if there is a cache feature. I don't believe that it is a function of mergerfs either. As for your other mergerfs questions I would suggest the open media vault forums. Trapexit (developer of mergerfs) is active over there.

Edit 2: you only need the 8087 to 8087 cable if you use the 8088 to 8087 adapter and an
SAS expander card. As long as the cable ends match the port they go into you should be fine.

I don't know of any guides, but for the home user, it's really not expensive or difficult.

What you need, besides HBA in your host machine, is just a bunch of cabling. If you don't have an HBA...cheap and available on ebay.

Just an FYI: Most hard drives don't use a lot of power. (you can look up the max power requirements for specific drives through their manufacturer spec sheet) A 500 watt power supply can often supply the vast majority of that over the 12v rails. Your power supply can run many more disks than it has provisions for, so splitter cables are often the only way to maximize your chassis disk space. As I mentioned before: don't use cables with molded connectors. Cables like https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086OGN9E - you can see they are plastic and snap around the cables themselves and aren't a molded piece.

The super quick and dirty to expand your storage past your server computer's space or power capabilities is:

• A second computer case or disk chassis with it's own power supply
  
• A way to trigger the power supply to turn on with the machine, such as: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074DGPL85/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1 (when the molex port receives power, it triggers a relay to power on the power supply connected to the 20/24 pin)
  
• A way to connect the drives, which is just SFF-8088 from host to disk chassis. You can install a bracket like https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B01GPD9QEQ - or you can just pull an SFF-8088 to Sata through a hole to the chassis. Depends on how cheap you are. (I'm pr gd cheap) You can route an internal sff-8087 out of your host chassis with that kind of bracket too.
  
  GL fellow data hoarder
  

I'd consider adding something like this to the build list too: https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8088-SFF-8087-Adapter-Bracket/dp/B01GPD9QEQ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=internal+to+external+sas+adapter&qid=1554405123&s=gateway&sr=8-3

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(maybe not that, I've had cable creation cables just plain not work before, though their 10GbE DAC cables seem fine so far)

Cool, this might work. Can I run the card with this?

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Edit: I do not plan to have a motherboard in the case. Besides what I stated above, how would I power the card? Generally, I see that these cards have SAS outputs. How would connect this to my main PC. Would I need a SAS input on main PC or would I get a SAS to USB cable?

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Edit2: I think I misunderstood how the card is being used. The 9201-8e card would go into my main PC and it will simply connect to hard drives using SATA to SAS cables. Or I can use something like this to terminate the cable at eh PCI slot.

Let me start by saying, I interpret your question as 'can I directly connect the drives in my M1200 to my R730, ceding full access and control to the R730, with no additional parts?'

To that question, the answer is, in short, no.

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The Avamar is a full-blown server, not a DAS. The drive backplane of the M1200 connects to an Intel RES2SV240 SAS expander, in turn connected to a motherboard-integrated RAID card which I can't remember the model of. If you don't know much about SAS, you can think of it sort of like a network where the RAID card is a router, the SAS expander a dumb switch, and all the drives on the backplane as end devices. That to say, somehow the RAID controller in your R730 needs to connect to your drives via a SAS connection, which isn't exposed by the M1200 natively.

The cheapest way to achieve this would be to get an external-to-internal SAS adapter like this for the M1200, connect the internal side to your SAS expander (instead of the onboard RAID controller), and connect the external ports to your R730 with an external SAS HBA (like a PERC H800e, H200e, etc) with external SAS SFF8088 cables. Your M1200 will still function as a server ofc, but the drives will be connected to the R730.

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Now, what you're talking about with ISCSI is completely different, it's a way to share block devices over a network. If that is in fact what you intend to do, someone else can chime in on troubleshooting that — I don't have much experience in that department.