I am doing my first server build in many years and I bought a SuperMicro X9DRL-iF dual Xeon board which has (2) Sata3 and (8) Sata2 (4 AHCI/4 SCU) ports. I also ordered a 9211-8i card I will flash to IT mode. I will use the Sata3 ports for 2 SSD cache drives. I will initially start my build with (4) 8TB shucked drives and add more later. I initially bought the HBA because it supports SATA3 speeds and my drives are SATA3. However, I later learned that spinners can’t utilize the full SATA2 speeds anyways. What I don’t understand is if using multiple drives at the same time on the onboard would cause a bottleneck.
Is there any advantage to using the 9211-8i for the spinner drives as opposed to the onboard Sata2?. I would rather use the onboard sata2 if there is no advantage until I move beyond 8 spinner drives.