the SE1210 (1 socket) and SE1220 (2 socket) are just lefthand devices. Many times folks will try to sell them but will fail since they are very much not a normal board:
SE1220 - real bios, real ilo2 dedicated, 2 x8 (optional 3rd x4), 1 x 16, 8 drive bay without expander. Able to tap into power and hide some extra ssd inside
I have both and the SE1220 is my favorite server - the only beef is the lack of the built in USB slot to boot (and no sd).
They are bulletproof with the P420/1GB FBWC, and 450GB 15K SAS drives. I'd dare say just as if not better than the venerable DL380 (dl380 has two x8 and two x4 OR 4 x8 so you can rock two 10gbe nic's and two P420/LSI9266 cards, 4 built on gigabit plus ilo).
Speaking of sas expanders, i had 300gb ancient 15K sas drive blow up , i pulled and pushed it twice, then a 2TB SATA on the DL180 with SAS Expander failed. I pushed it , it rebuilt, no errors. (AKA the hot swap caused a drive to flip out).
The SAS expanders I do not enjoy and they impair performance greatly. The 8 bay LFF model is FAR faster.
However the Single 6gbit DL180 12LFF has one dedicated lane for SSD acceleration - and the P420/1gb FBWC deal o century controller has read caching. 1gb FBWC can do 750gb read-ahead and give you the rest for (boot/scratch). the 2GB FBWC can do 1.5TB SSD and the rest is yours to do with. 100% safe - i did the yank while under verify ATTO stress many times and a junky old X25-M made a helluva difference.
Unlike LSI, HP (PMC-adaptec) uses ILO style keys
and licenses it per server - one key on the honor system - where as LSI is DRM ridden junk with the worlds worst interface.
HP just rocks. Want to hear my latest beef? The DELL R610 came with a special storage controller slot, and H700 in that slot. PCI-E 4.0 gen 1 !!! with fastpath I had 6 SSD hooked up, never could understand why the perc was slower! The cards have to be taped over (SMBUS) to work on other computers, that my friend is DELL JUNK.
Also you can get 18 dimms and 2 sockets in 1U with RPS on HP (DL160) or 9 dimms and 1 socket (DL320/SE1210 sorta).
The real kicker is the SE1220/DL180 uses INTEL NIC which doesn't suck. I've had so much problems with the broadcom that I never want to see them again.
There is a place that will sell you any DL180 you want, for instance I needed 12LFF only, not 14LFF, so the guy lit up a special auction for $200 for a cto (no cpu,power supply) with rails, shipped from CA to ATL (OUCH!). Perfect !
I've got this freebie DL120 G6 and i'm about to source a DL160 motherboard for it since I have a couple of E5520 and I need to replace my desktop that is crunching numbers with something that fits nicely in a rack.
Truly amazing server, I'd suggest the 8 drive version. The sas expander is another fail point and it may be possible to use the DL180 G6 4 slot (yes they made a 4 LFF version) with the 8 slot and perhaps rock two SAS controllers