My 2nd ML350 G6 for my home lab was kinda pokey...I ran a disk benchmark and found that the SSD wouldn't write beyond 20Mbps. I assumed I had killed off the Intel 180gb drive. So I swapped it for a 160gb Intel I had in the parts pile. The speeds came back, OK great, move on. Well then later on I freed up a Crucial 256gb drive that was newer, faster, and larger, so swapped it out for the Intel. The dismal write speeds were back. I did notice that the ML350 has 6 SATA ports, and VMware reports it as having two SATA controllers, one with 4 connections and another with 2. I tried different ports, different SATA cables, even different power cables. Still horrible write speeds.
I gave up and installed a generic SATA 6gbps PCI-e card out of the parts pile that has a Marvelle chip on it. VMware 6.x saw this controller without issues. Not only did the speeds come back but they are way faster than a previous test I ran over a year ago, I can only assume that when I ran a benchmark test with this very same controller a year a go, the hard drive in question couldn't fully utilize the 6gbps?
Using onboard SATA controller, on a good ML350.
Using the add-in 6gbps PIC-e SATA controller.
The test I ran with the same card, same SSD a few years ago.
If anyone on knows why the HP had slow onboard SATA speeds let me know, it is kind of a null and void point now, however I'd still like to know.
