Atom and esata external fileserver

[ak47]

I need a machine to be on most the time to run Ubuntu with
Apache, Tomcat, MySql, Sabnzb (binary newsgroup daemon), Transmission (torrent daemon), SSH, Squid, DansGuardian, Samba filesharing and a bunch of other minor services/daemons. It will also be used as a part time desktop for email and surfing. Most of the time is from early morning to late night.

Drives wise - I run around 5 -6 HDD as a JBOD setup. The fileserving feature is not high - only particular times in the day.

So I have decided on an Atom server (D510 and now even a D525). To manage the extra drives and to save power, I am thinking along the lines ff an eSata enclosure (something like an Edgestor DAS501T). This is to be switched on when I need to serve files - hence the external enclosure.

Problems:
Is this an okay setup? - I am not 100% sure that an eSata multi drive enclosure can be bootstrapped like USB while the main pc is up - and even brought down as well.

I am struggling to find a suitable Atom board - preferably with an Intel Gigabit NIC as I have had problems in the past with a Realtek NIC across SAMBA (I have had to resort to using a NIC on the PCI bus) - and with eSATA.

Does the eSata need to be Port Multiplier aware?

Has anyone done anything similar?

I have spent a lot of time researching this combination and its feasibility but can't find a suitable motherboard. After struggling with this, I read of the lower power consmption of an i3 or i5 but this is still a fair bit more than an Atom CPU.