HP ProLiant MicroServer owners' thread

Need some advice here :)

I am currently running a 2-bay D-Link DNS-321 for file serving to my XBMC client and it works great but I am looking to expand to a server than can hold more storage and run sabnzbd, couchpotato and sickbeard. Would this microserver serve me well or should I build something like the following:

CPU: Intel Core i3 2100T
Mobo: ITX something
Case: Lian-Li q08
Mem: 4GBx2 DDR3

I priced it out and the i3 build wouldn't be much more than the microserver with upgraded RAM.

Any thoughts? Thanks!
 
Last edited:
I'd say the N36L is more than capable of what you want to do, soccermatt34. Don't forget to include a PSU in your home-build.
 
Hey Guys...... and Girls

I wanted to publish a simple website documenting my progress with some hopefully interesting points and resources / links.

Unfortunately as I found out last night my ISPs free webspace is absolutely awful. Couldn't even do a simple single long scrolling page.

As an interm I've created a site that has a link to my work in progress 60Mb Microsoft Word Doc.

I'll get this changed as soon as I can but someone might find my Word Doc interesting in the meantime.

It's based on Flash and the file seems to take a loooooooooooooong time to download

http://emm386.website.orange.co.uk/


Questions

Is there any point in me installing ESXi to my internal 16Gb USB Pen when it’s just the core ESXi part itself which is pretty useless without the hard drive that stores the Virtual Machine images? Can I not have it all on the one hard drive? I.e. Can images and the ESXi core reside on the same disk? What benefit would it give me to keep it on the USB pen?

On another ESXi related item and I promised I did do a web search on this one. Is it possible to display the Virtual Machine on the actual server screen? I.e. I have Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows 7 Virtual Images on ESXi and I want to use them at the actual server. I want to use it as a NAS / HTPC

Has anyone successfully managed to remove the plastic black panels from the server? I tried last weekend. The sides look easy to come off but are held on by the front lip on the bottom panel. The bottom seems secured at the front lip by 2 different sets of clips. 1 set of 2 large horizontal pull tabs that have a stud on them. And 1 set of 3 small vertical clips under the metal lip. The 3 small ones don’t appear to be tight so I’m assuming the 2 big ones are the ones holding it on.

I was asking as I want to fit an additional hard drive behind the health led. However I’m quite anal retentive (as can be seen from the cable ties on my link) and I really didn’t want to hack a big hole in the case. I wanted to remove the plastics to see if the back of the server was screwed on or welded on. But given the rest of the case it looks like it’s most likely spot welded on.

My new plan is to drill out the spot welds on the bottom of the health led bracket. Bend it upwards. Slip in the drive and bend it back.

Thanks

Ewan (EMM386)
 
Hi Guys,

Planning on purchasing one of these babies hopefully soon. I plan to use it as a NAS/HTPC as it would be replacing my mediagate and rather old file server (its a P4 3.2Ghz).

I plan to do the following (any suggestions or criticisms welcomed)
1. Install the max RAM, i believe it can support 8Gb non ecc. This is basically a install and forget and don't worry about upgrading later. Plus 8Gb (2 x 4Gb) is pretty cheap nowadays, less than $AU80

2. Buy a PCIe 1x video card and whacking that in the PCIe1x slot. The card I would like to put is the HIS 5450 Silence 1GB DDR3 PCIe 1x . Its fanless, has HDMI and audio. It should run the HTPC side of things hopefully well.

3. To put the ODD space to good use, i was planning to purchase one of these, 5.25 Slim CD to 5.25 inch ODD and 2 x 2.5 inch HDD. I would be putting a slim blu-ray ODD, and 2 x 320Gb or 500Gb HDD depending on prices and putting the HDD in RAID 1.

4. Now for the RAID card. Planning on getting the Highpoint RocketRAID 2680 . According to the specs this uses the SFF-8087 mini-sas connection which is currently what the HP Microserver uses. So it should be a matter of plugging the mini-sas cable from the motherboard to the RAID card. Since it also supports another 4 sata devices, i was planning to get another mini-sas SFF-8087 cable from ebay and using that for the 2 x 2.5 HDD in the ODD bay. Or i could plug that cable and use the onboard RAID for the 2.5 HDD.

5. Install 4 x 2Tb in the caddies. I was thinking aboout the Samsung HD204UI, as i already have one of these in my file server. Planning to RAID 5 these using the above RAID card.

I have a few questions regarding the above and i'm hoping you guys could answer or shed some light for me:
1. would the 150w PSU support the extra 2 x 2.5" HDD and the slim ODD?

2. I have read on Pg. 17 that alot of people recommend the HP, IBM and LSI RAID cards. However its hard and quite expensive to source these out. On ebay, most of these cards are $600 and above, except for the IBM one which are around $150 mark. Would the one that I plan to get be the equivelent or worse than these cards?

3. There is a USB port on the motherboard. If I attach a 2.5" HDD using a SATA to USB converter would that work. I would be placing the drive at the back of the ODD section and it seems like there sould be space? Would the PSU handle the extra HDD ontop of the above specs?

Your inputs are greatly appreciated :)

and sorry for the long post.
 
Hi all,

i have too this pretty box. I have switched a ReadyNAS NV+ to these BOX.
I upgaded too, but just a "little", the currently configuration:

8GB ECC 1333 Kingston RAM
Adaptec 2805 RIAD card, with 128 MB RAM
A 4x2,5" to 5,25" Rack filled with:
- 2 pcs 320GB Western Digital HDD
- 2 pcs Corsair 60GB SSD
the disks are:
- 2 pcs Samsung HD103UJ (1TB)
- 2 pcs Hitachi HDS722020ALA330 (2TB)

Planed configuration:
2x mirror ~ 2,7TB DISK, ZFS, with a small 27GB log and same sized CACHE device, sliced from the SSD, to have as fast as can data access...

Experiences:
Installed first time a Solaris 10 u9
Inner speed is near at 210 ~ 230 MB/sec (dd'ed write and read)
Outer speed like, for example scp, write speed to these fs is arround 20-22MB/sec
(i tested the zpool iostat activity under solaris with "zpool iosatat -v" whats dont show any log-device activity......, i have made an separate zpool from the ssd's to chech its usage, and was a really fast access speed... tested the zil activity with zilstat.ksh script, fount on internet, but also these dont show any zol log device activity under the writes..)

Second time nexenta
inner speed is arround 200MB/sec
outer speed, example ftp, is arround 15-20MB/sec

My questions, that what i make wrong? I tried to change the recv and xmit window size to 128k in solaris, tuned to 4Gig the ZFS_ARC max (what would accessed no one time), i tired to read these forums lines, but have no idea, how can i make the box as fast as can. Actually i hoped a 40MB/sec write speed from these config... :(

I read about the Intel network cards performance, but that is also readable here, that the inner bge interface could bring his performance...

Plese help me with some advises, or RTFM, with best regards,

SirFrankie
 
I was wondering if anyone knew if the ati 6550 low profile will work in this? or what is the recommended gfx card - I have been told to avoid passively cooled gfx as not too good with all that heat dump, but am hearing differing advice.

I would love to hear from you guys...got mine for £130 (after hp cashback)
 
Just unboxed and powered mine up. Impressed by the build quality, but this is louder than my desktop and the DIY server I'm trying to replace. The good news is that the noise seems to be primarily from the massive airflow. Is there a bios mod/setting to reduce the fan speed? Or a windows based app? Will the cooling still be sufficient if I reduce the fan speed? I only have 5400 rpm drives.
 
rlisms said:
Just unboxed and powered mine up. Impressed by the build quality, but this is louder than my desktop and the DIY server I'm trying to replace. The good news is that the noise seems to be primarily from the massive airflow. Is there a bios mod/setting to reduce the fan speed? Or a windows based app? Will the cooling still be sufficient if I reduce the fan speed? I only have 5400 rpm drives.
Click to expand...

It should be just about silent

120mm fan SHOULD slow down after boot up to a crawl
Some have had bad PSU fans which are noisy.

all you should hear is the HDD's chattering

.
 
I am trying to run Windows 2003 server on the microserver but I was surprised that HP does not have drivers for it.

Can anyone help with the drivers for the Graphics Card and SMB for it or if not can someone provide me with the model number for the graphics card so I can search for the drivers.

Thanks in advance.
 
Stanza33 said:
I posted links for the lan card and AMD drivers in this thread

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showpost.php?p=13183786&postcount=150
Click to expand...

Thanks I will give that a try. I need to use it for my studies in 2003 Server and I was annoyed when HP said they do not support anything else besides Windows 2008 or Redhat Linux 5. Why only give 2 choices of OS for something being sold to potential business customers. The company I work for still use Win 2000 server but are upgrading to Win 2010 Server. So HP should offer more choices.
 
Stanza33 said:
It should be just about silent

120mm fan SHOULD slow down after boot up to a crawl
Some have had bad PSU fans which are noisy.

all you should hear is the HDD's chattering

.
Click to expand...

Fan does indeed slow down to about 1100-1200 RPM after initial power up. I only have sub-800 RPM 120mm scythe fans in my other boxes, so quiet is pretty subjective. Tried SpeedFan and MWMonitor Pro - no luck. Might just have to go with hardware swap.
 
rlisms said:
Fan does indeed slow down to about 1100-1200 RPM after initial power up. I only have sub-800 RPM 120mm scythe fans in my other boxes, so quiet is pretty subjective. Tried SpeedFan and MWMonitor Pro - no luck. Might just have to go with hardware swap.
Click to expand...

If you're going to attempt a fan swap, read this first!
 
28mikes said:
I need to use it for my studies in 2003 Server ....
Click to expand...

Attention, you can install Win 2003 and Win XP (with AMD & Broadcom device driver) but when you trasmitt in lan big file (size > 5 GB) the OS crash.

So, for me, this 2 win don't work.

Win 2008 R2 work fine.
 
Tomvar said:
Attention, you can install Win 2003 and Win XP (with AMD & Broadcom device driver) but when you trasmitt in lan big file (size > 5 GB) the OS crash.

So, for me, this 2 win don't work.

Win 2008 R2 work fine.
Click to expand...

And if you use the HP driver for the broadcom?

I have been using the HP driver with WHS v1 all along, copy many HD TV recorded files over 10gb and no problems
 
Stanza33 said:
And if you use the HP driver for the broadcom?

I have been using the HP driver with WHS v1 all along, copy many HD TV recorded files over 10gb and no problems
Click to expand...

Good, which driver yoy are using?

I used only Broadcom device driver v14.2.0.5a (32 bit).

HP don't has driver for 2003.

With 2008R2 i used HP driver cp013024 (equal to v14.2.0.5a 64 bit).

Now, Broadcom report update driver for Win2003 with v14.6.0.6a but i don't use them, now i am using only W2008-R2.
 
This would appear to be a common FreeBSD fault, so it's no surprise that it happens on FreeNAS 0.7.2 Sabanda (revision 6469) (I've tried many revisions, all the same or worse!).

This is occurring on a HP ProLiant MicroServer N36L with embedded network interface on motherboard.

bge0: <HP NC107i PCIe Gigabit Server Adapter, ASIC rev. 0x5784100>
<BCM5784 10/100/1000baseTX PHY>

kernel: bge0: link state changed to UP
kernel: bge0: link state changed to DOWN
kernel: bge0: watchdog timeout -- resetting

not much good for a Network Attached Storage device, keep reseting it's networking.

Any ideas, other than adding a new network interface card?
 
Yep. I tried various builds of FreeBSD and they all had problems with the bge0 driver.

It's a very long standing issue, and seemingly there is no cure or no interest in finding a cure (as of 6 months ago anyway). I could always get the bge0 driver to hang then reset when performing bulk transfers - testing with iperf in FreeNAS 0.7.2 was guaranteed to cause a problem within seconds of any transfer starting. Obviously this is unacceptable for a file server...

I cut my losses, bought an Intel GigE CT low-profile desktop NIC for £20, dropped it into the PCIex1 slot and disabled the motherboard NIC - problem solved.
 
Thanks for the reply.

I was hoping not to have to purchase a new network card, but having spent many man hours, searching the Internet, it would seem FreeBSD is the issue, with the bge0 driver.

I may now be tempted to drop back to 0.7.1 FreeNAS which had no support for the bge0 nic, as I've found 0.7.2 to be disastrous, the worst build of FreeNAS ever!

I've been running stock 0.686, 0.69, 0.7.1 build for everr without issue, 0.7.2 is terrible. So much for progress, and don't start me on FreeNAS 8!
 
Don't limit yourself for the sake of £20 - go buy an Intel NIC so you can put this issue behind you, and then you can use whatever build you like.

For what it's worth, I built two N36L's both with the Intel NICs, one has been running FreeNAS 0.7.2 r5543 (embedded on 2GB USB stick) with ZFS and 4x1TB Samsungs for about 4 months while the second I'm testing FreeNAS 8.0.1-BETA4. No problems with either, though I did read that some of the later 0.7.2 release may have introduced problems - get r5543 if you can, rock solid reliable.
 
I've had massive problems with 0.7.2, most builds with fatal 12 trap restarts, with SoftRaid Rebuilds. Only moved onto 0.7.2 for the nic driver for the bge0!

not tried 5543, tried all the others up to 0.7.2 Sabanda (revision 6469), this seems stable. I'm also embedded in HP 165w 4Gb flash, 4xHD.

as I said never had a stability issue ever with FreeNAS until 0.7.2!
 
MilhouseVH said:
Don't limit yourself for the sake of £20 - go buy an Intel NIC so you can put this issue behind you, and then you can use whatever build you like.

For what it's worth, I built two N36L's both with the Intel NICs, one has been running FreeNAS 0.7.2 r5543 (embedded on 2GB USB stick) with ZFS and 4x1TB Samsungs for about 4 months while the second I'm testing FreeNAS 8.0.1-BETA4. No problems with either, though I did read that some of the later 0.7.2 release may have introduced problems - get r5543 if you can, rock solid reliable.
Click to expand...

any chance you could send me a url to get r5543
 
Hello.
Does anyone have Lights Out working on WHS 2011 on an HP Microserver?

Simply cannot get it to suggest other options than to turn off my server.

Would somehow like to reduce its power consumption.
it runs 24 / 7

uses about 200 W

HP Micro server
Hp p410 Raidcontroller
2 * 250 GB raid 1
2 * 2 TB Raid 5

Extra case
Hp SAS expander
8 * 2 TB Raid 5
 
Can you put the Microserver to sleep or hibernate from the console? POWERCFG -H ON enables Hibernation. I have mine on all the time so I haven't bothered to check and I haven't got the ILO card either but just wondered!
 
Okay, so i've got a few of these boxes. So far i've only put win2k8+hyper-v on them.

I now have a requirement to build a small backup/archiving NAS. I've got

HP Micro Server N36L
8gb RAM
4x2tb WD SATA HDD
8gb usb flash for boot

I was considering Nexentastor CE, but the CPU requirements for RAIDZ* may be too much. I don't have any experience of FreeNAS or OpenFiler so don't have a huge amount of confidence there. I have also considered Windows Storage Server but unsure if you can install and run it reliably onto 8gb usb flash.

The use case is backing up ESXi snapshots using ghettovcb. I need the storage to be mounted via iSCSI or NFS. Backups today take just over an hour and total size is approx. 60GB. I've not established if this is a storage performance constraint, but I suspect it is (currently a shared openfiler box out of my control). I guess this works out to approx. 15MB/sec write speed over NFS. If I could at least match that with my new box i'll be reasonably happy, but if I can greatly improve it to the point where I could use it for more interactive stuff (like some low-performance VM's) that'd be better.

Anyone done any back-to-back comparisons of the above to offer opinion?

Thanks :)
 
Hi All,

I am having some major issues with transfer/streaming speeds on my freenas setup.
Basically I get about 800kbps dropping down to 3/4kbps almost instantly then dropping out completely.
It repeats this cycle constantly and I have no idea how to increase the speed and maintain it?
I have read that people are getting speeds around 40-60Mbps and was hoping to achieve the same.

Here is a list of things I have tried so far:-
- Fitted a new PCIe Intel NIC, problem still persists
- Changed the Advanced Power Management of each drive to 254, problem still persists
- Directly connected HP Proliant Microserver to my PC with a cross over cable, problem still persists

Here is the spec of my system:-
- HP Proliant Microserver N36L
- Freenas 7 – 0.7.2 Sabanda (revision 5543)
- FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-P3 (revision 199506)
- 8GB ECC Kingston RAM
- 250GB HDD that came with it (not configured yet) in slot ad4
- 2 Samsung HD103SJ 1TB drives in Soft Raid 1, in slots ad8 & ad10
- Advanced Power Management of each drive is 127
- Drive Transfer modes are UDMA-133
- Round Robin Config
- 512 Sector Size

Can anyone offer some help/advice?

Thanks in advance.
 
Disable APM completely on the Samsungs - not 127, not 254, leave it disabled.

The Samsung drives are "Green" drives and they have extremely aggressive power management which tries to park/unload the heads at every opportunity, literally within seconds any disk access.

In FreeNAS, unless you want this behaviour (it's admittedly ideal for a backup server scenario) do not enable APM for these Samsung drives, although you can still enable spin down so that the drives will power down when idle for whatever period of time you consider reasonable (usually minutes rather than seconds). See this thread on the FN7 forum.

As for any other cause.... the Broadcom NIC in the N36L caused me a lot of grief, with the bge driver constantly downing the interface and bringing it back up, it's a long standing bug/problem with the bge driver in FreeBSD. My solution was to fit an Intel CT NIC but I see you've already tried something similar so not sure what else to suggest.

Check your cabling - make sure it's good quality Cat5/Cat6 cable; check all NICs are negotiating their speed correctly - if necessary disable auto-negotiate and set fixed spaeed; enable/disable Jumbo Frames...

Running iperf is a good network test (included with FN7), without including other variables such as disk sub-system, file protocols - I would recommend using iperf to establish your network is OK (or not), then try to narrow it down from there. You can find pre-compiled Windows binaries of iperf on the internet.
 
ha_sjo said:
Okay, so i've got a few of these boxes. So far i've only put win2k8+hyper-v on them.

I now have a requirement to build a small backup/archiving NAS. I've got

HP Micro Server N36L
8gb RAM
4x2tb WD SATA HDD
8gb usb flash for boot

I was considering Nexentastor CE, but the CPU requirements for RAIDZ* may be too much. I don't have any experience of FreeNAS or OpenFiler so don't have a huge amount of confidence there. I have also considered Windows Storage Server but unsure if you can install and run it reliably onto 8gb usb flash.

The use case is backing up ESXi snapshots using ghettovcb. I need the storage to be mounted via iSCSI or NFS. Backups today take just over an hour and total size is approx. 60GB. I've not established if this is a storage performance constraint, but I suspect it is (currently a shared openfiler box out of my control). I guess this works out to approx. 15MB/sec write speed over NFS. If I could at least match that with my new box i'll be reasonably happy, but if I can greatly improve it to the point where I could use it for more interactive stuff (like some low-performance VM's) that'd be better.

Anyone done any back-to-back comparisons of the above to offer opinion?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Lots of info here for you

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=958208

;)
 
Hi, I am very interested in buying one Proliant microserver.
One thing I am wondering.
What about powerconsumption ? I have read that its approx 45Watt with 4 2TB disks.
What do you guys have for powerconsumption?
 
MilhouseVH said:
No, the P400 uses two SFF-8484 connectors (the HP N36L uses an SFF-8087).

I think you'd be better off with an LSI 9211-8i (up to 6GB SATA3) or IBM BR10i (up to 3GB SATA2) controller either of which can use the existing SFF-8087 internal cabling plus an additional 40-50cm SFF-8087 to 4 SATA/SAS forward breakout cable (cheap as chips) for the second port.

In addition, as you are space limited even with a low profile card below the PSU, attaching a thick or inflexible cable half way along the card could result in the cable being stressed below the PSU. Both the 9211-8i (which I have in my N36L) and BR10i have their connectors at the end of the card which should mean cable routing is less troublesome, although the horizontal connectors on the 9211-8i are probably a better option in the N36L than the vertically mounted connectors on the BR10i as the latter could still be covered by internal case work.

For the record, I originally had a 9240-8i that had vertical connectors positioned nearest the PCI slot cover and below the PSU, and connecting the two SFF-8087 cables (the "internal" stiff cable and a second more flexible breakout cable) was a bit of a struggle. Due to OS support/driver reasons I swapped it for a 9211-8i and it's been happy days ever since.
Click to expand...

Does the backplane of the the MicroServer support SATA 3? e.g. if you use a LSI 9211-8i existing cabling and backplane with SATA 3 disks, do you get SATA 3, or does it fall back to SATA 2?
 
Quart said:
Hi, I am very interested in buying one Proliant microserver.
One thing I am wondering.
What about powerconsumption ? I have read that its approx 45Watt with 4 2TB disks.
What do you guys have for powerconsumption?
Click to expand...

I'm fully loaded with 4 x 2TB disks and get 43 Watts, with 8GB RAM, and another Intel Network card.

on another MicroServer, I've got HP Smart Array P410, Internal Intel NIC, 2 x 500GB discs in backplane, Sharkoon 6 bay, 2 x 2.5" disks, and it's 63 Watts.
 
paddlingpool said:
Hi All,

I am having some major issues with transfer/streaming speeds on my freenas setup.
Basically I get about 800kbps dropping down to 3/4kbps almost instantly then dropping out completely.
It repeats this cycle constantly and I have no idea how to increase the speed and maintain it?
I have read that people are getting speeds around 40-60Mbps and was hoping to achieve the same.

Here is a list of things I have tried so far:-
- Fitted a new PCIe Intel NIC, problem still persists
- Changed the Advanced Power Management of each drive to 254, problem still persists
- Directly connected HP Proliant Microserver to my PC with a cross over cable, problem still persists

Here is the spec of my system:-
- HP Proliant Microserver N36L
- Freenas 7 – 0.7.2 Sabanda (revision 5543)
- FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE-P3 (revision 199506)
- 8GB ECC Kingston RAM
- 250GB HDD that came with it (not configured yet) in slot ad4
- 2 Samsung HD103SJ 1TB drives in Soft Raid 1, in slots ad8 & ad10
- Advanced Power Management of each drive is 127
- Drive Transfer modes are UDMA-133
- Round Robin Config
- 512 Sector Size

Can anyone offer some help/advice?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

FreeNAS is poor, it's rubbish, but if you want to stick with it, change the NIC, and purchase an Intel one. It's outdated, it's not kept up with recent developements, if you are serious change the NAS OS.

You may be interested in recent benchmarks with the SAME Hardware! (just changed the OS!).

FreeNAS versus Open Solaris 11
 
ha_sjo said:
Okay, so i've got a few of these boxes. So far i've only put win2k8+hyper-v on them.

I now have a requirement to build a small backup/archiving NAS. I've got

HP Micro Server N36L
8gb RAM
4x2tb WD SATA HDD
8gb usb flash for boot

I was considering Nexentastor CE, but the CPU requirements for RAIDZ* may be too much. I don't have any experience of FreeNAS or OpenFiler so don't have a huge amount of confidence there. I have also considered Windows Storage Server but unsure if you can install and run it reliably onto 8gb usb flash.

The use case is backing up ESXi snapshots using ghettovcb. I need the storage to be mounted via iSCSI or NFS. Backups today take just over an hour and total size is approx. 60GB. I've not established if this is a storage performance constraint, but I suspect it is (currently a shared openfiler box out of my control). I guess this works out to approx. 15MB/sec write speed over NFS. If I could at least match that with my new box i'll be reasonably happy, but if I can greatly improve it to the point where I could use it for more interactive stuff (like some low-performance VM's) that'd be better.

Anyone done any back-to-back comparisons of the above to offer opinion?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

building a SuperSAN SSD for ESXi at this very moment.

FreeNAS, Openfiler are history, ZFS is the future, (Windows Storage Server, oh no!).

SuperSAN SSD
 
einsteinagogo said:
Does the backplane of the the MicroServer support SATA 3? e.g. if you use a LSI 9211-8i existing cabling and backplane with SATA 3 disks, do you get SATA 3, or does it fall back to SATA 2?
Click to expand...

As long as SATA2 and SATA3 are physically the same and differ only in terms of wire protocol, then I don't see why SATA3 disks won't work at full SATA3 speed with a 9211-8i using the N36L backplane.
 
MilhouseVH said:
As long as SATA2 and SATA3 are physically the same and differ only in terms of wire protocol, then I don't see why SATA3 disks won't work at full SATA3 speed with a 9211-8i using the N36L backplane.
Click to expand...

you have a LSI 9211-8i in your N36L, but do not have SATA 3 disks connected?
 
einsteinagogo said:
you have a LSI 9211-8i in your N36L, but do not have SATA 3 disks connected?
Click to expand...

Correct.

I have 8x SATA2 spinning magnetic disks in my N36L (two vdevs, one zpool - 4x2TB 3.5", 4x500GB 2.5", all Samsung) at the moment and combined these are more than capable of saturating the Intel CT GigE NIC.

Maybe later I will shuffle four of the HDD disks (probably the original backplane disks) back to the currently unused onboard N36L SATA2 connection, allowing me to add a couple of SATA3 SSDs to the 9211-8i for mirrored ZIL/L2ARC purposes (will have to sneak 'em in somewhere, probably underneath the ODD bay). Until then, I doubt I would see any worthwhile benefit from using SATA3 HDDs.
 
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