First of all, software RAID does not support expander. So you will have to use a 3rd party RAID controller card. Secondly, there is no any PCI or PCI-X controller card can support expander. Therefore, you need to use a PCI-E controller card. We have tested LSI-8408E (supporting up to 32 drives) and LSI-8480E (supporting up to 122 drives) without any problem. But these 2 cards cannot be plugged into X7DVL-3’s PCI-E slot. So you will have to use other kind of motherboard such as X7DVL-E in order to work with the LSI controller card and expander. The cable you will need is an IPASS to IPASS cable CBL-1008L. For performance issue, we recommend SAS drives.