I'm confused about what you want and what you're being told. An MSA 1040 with SAS connection to your host doesn't need switches - it effectively allows you to direct connect with a SAS cable your MSA to your host. How many servers are you trying to use with your MSA 1040? What specifically are your hosts? If they are ProLiants, all you need is SAS cables to connect to the MSA.
And I have no idea why you're being told you need an ProLiant DL180.
Here is a link to the MSA 1040 User Guide. A few things to look at:
- Figure 6 on page 14 shows the back of the MSA 1040 with the SAS host ports.
- Page 28 starts a section on how to connect MSA 1040 with SAS to hosts. It has lots of instructions as well as diagrams that show different number of hosts.
- One additional thing to mention is something called a SAS "fan-out-cable" that we only support with the MSA 1040 that allows you to double the number of hosts. Fan-out cables are discussed in multiple places in the User Guide if that's something you need.
If you didn't get the cables you need, be sure to use the supported SAS cables that are in the MSA 1040 QuickSpec. Not sure why but the in the User Guide it uses "fan-out" cable and in the QuickSpec there's no dash (fanout) - so if you are searching the PDFs to find those terms.
Connecting your MSAs via SAS is the easiest way - really, you'd use iSCSI only if there are more servers to connect than what is supported with SAS or the servers your connecting don't support SAS.
Hope that helps!