New build questions (Stacking/clustering servers, motherboard/case recommendations)

[FantomDew]

So i have been doing some digging and not finding any answers to the questions i have. Not sure if i am not searching the right topics or not. Most of the stuff i am finding are from before 2014. The setup: I am revisiting unRAID after a few months hietias. I had to abandon it back then for various reasons but looking at revisit. I am looking at essentially combining three machines. My main server, my game machine and my stream/editing machine. Plus do a couple other things with it. So i have a couple questions with this. The first is based of thinking i will eventually need two unRAID servers (more on that in a minute). Is there anything in the software to "stack/cluster" servers? Looking to stack the unRAID server like a lot of SANs can stack and act as one unit? The biggest reason for this is that my server right now runs with three LSI hba cards giving me 24 hard drives. This basically means no room on the motherboard or case for more PCIe cards. The second question: Does anyone have any recommendations for a motherboard/case suggestion to have more then 24 drives and be able to hold more then three GPUs with other expansion slots? I was trying to do some research to see if there were anything like external hard drive expansion cases or something but not having much luck.

[coolspot]

unRAID doesn't supporting clustering or stacking, although with the Unassigned Drive Plug-In, you can map remote shares to the server. This way, you log into one server and remote severs can also be reached through the one UNC path.

 

As for cases, look at a rackmount chassis with a SAS expander - this way one SAS card can service the entire chassis. 

 

The Noroco cases are pretty popular - they have a new model with a single SFF-8644 12gbs SAS expander support. The RPC-4244 is popular choice too, it has 6 internal connectors, so you can probably run the entire chassis off a card or two or use a single SAS Card +  RES2Sv240 expander connected to the on board expander on the RPC-4224.  A cheaper alternative to the Intel RES2Sv240 is a HP SAS Expander Card although it's less flexible in terms of installation than the Intel card... but it's cheap!

 

One more option you may want to consider - instead of having separate servers, you may want to chain additional drives into an external enclosure like a Direct Attached Storage. You can build your own using the RES2Sv240 card or buy a premade system: https://www.servethehome.com/byo-sas-expander-deal-intel-res2sv240-sas-2-expander/