nice board for a 1u server, if you don't have to run linux

This board is a little odd in that it has two SATA raid controllers on board. The primary one has four ports, and is made by Marvell, and the second one has only two ports and is made by Intel, and is called the Hance Rapids (aka ICH5R). Both of these RAID controllers have Adaptec firmware, but both suffer from somewhat problematic drivers from the manufacturer.

Drivers in binary form are available for both of the controllers direct from supermicro, if you don't mind running redhat 8 or 9. If you want to run a newer version of redhat such has Enterprise 3.0, then you are pretty much stuck with using the less featureful ICH5R and are therefore stuck with two ports.

Although supermicro will give you source code for the Marvell controller, it does not have a GNU license, so will not make it into the Linux kernel. Supermicro now has another board that has the ICH6R, which has a more open architecture, and will probably be better supported.