Motherboard: Intel S5520HCR s1366 SSI EEB

Question

I'm building a storage server for online video streaming. I thought about adding two SSD drive for a OS. other 15*(12 SATA & 3 SSD) drives i want to build with aufs XFS and ethernet 4GB/sec network.

But I'm confused a little. S5520HCR board supports 6, SATA/300, RAID: 0, 1, 10, Intel ICH10R. Does it mean i can use SATAIII HDD? I'm planing on buying SEAGATE SV35 Series (3.5, 3ТБ, 64МБ, SATA III-600).

also my Chassis supports up-to 16 sata and the motherboard only 6 what kind of sata controller should i use?

What's better in terms of performance 1366 or 2011 socket?

My server so far:

    AIC RSC-3EG-80R-SA1S-2 3U
    Motherboard: Intel S5520HCR s1366 SSI EEB
    Kingston DDR3 8192Mb PC3-10600 1333MHz (KVR1333D3N9/8G)
    Seagate 3000GB 64MB 3.5" 7200rpm SATAIII (ST3000DM001)
    Kingston 480GB SSD 2.5" SATAIII 
    Intel E1G44HTBLK
    Intel Xeon E5606 2133MHz/L3-8192Kb/QPI s1366 tray    
    SERVER ACC CARD SAS PCIE 16P HBA 9201-16I LSI00244 SGL LSI

Answer 1

Does it mean i can use SATAIII HDD?

Yes, you can use SATA-3 HDDs.

You can use SATA-3 drives on SATA-1 (1.5Gb), SATA-2 (3.0Gb), and SATA-3 (6.0Gb) controllers. The combination will fall back to the lowest commonly supported speed. (Thus a SATA-3 drive on a SATA-2 interface will act as SATA-2).

What kind of sata controller should I use?

Since you are building a server, consider this:

• Consider what your goals are.
• Select a RAID level based on that goal. See this post on what the commonly used RAID levels are and when to use them.
• Consider at least two (small) drives for the OS in RAID1 (mirror). Keeping OS and data drive separate is a traditional choice (and for a good reason).
• Carefully consider the disadvantages of the Intel ICH10R chipset's raid mode before deciding never to touch that.
• Decide either on software RAID via the 6 on board connectors, or buy a hardware card.
• Look at the price differences between hardware card for just plain SATA ports, or HW SATA RAID cards, and HW SAS RAID cards. (price, performance. Will you add SAS in the future?)

Note that your post is very generic and you got a very generic answer. Feel free to add more information to the post. E.g. why are you building a server? How important is uptime (e.g. if it is very important I would have recommended SAS drives and HW RAID for more gracefull failures.). How much storage do you need and how expensive (which might have causes pointers to huge SATA drives and ZFS). Why are you not buying a well tested server from a vendor (more expensive, but often well tested, no pitfalls, good support and the time needed to figure things out on your own has to be balanced with the extra price of the pre-made server). Etc etc...