Areca ARC-12x5 Series User manual

ARC-12x5 Series
(PCIe 3.0 to 6Gb/s SAS RAID Controllers)
6Gb/s SAS RAID Cards
Quick Start Guide
Version: 1.1
Issue Date: December, 2014

Copyright and Trademarks
The information regarding products in this manual is subject to change
without prior notice and does not represent a commitment on the part
of the vendor, who assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors
that may appear in this manual. All brands and trademarks are the
properties of their respective owners. This manual contains materials
protected under International Copyright Conventions. All rights
reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without
the written permission of the manufacturer and the author.
FCC Statement
This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits
for a Class B digital device, pursuant to part 15 of the FCC Rules.
These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against in-
terference in a residential installation. This equipment generates, uses,
and can radiate radio frequency energy and, if not installed and used
in accordance with the instructions, may cause harmful interference to
radio communications. However, there is no guarantee that interfer-
ence will not occur in a particular installation.
Manufacturer’s Declaration for CE Certication
We conrm ARC-12x5 series has been tested and found compliant with
the requirements in the council directive relating to the EMC Directive
2004/108/EC. Regarding to the electromagnetic compatibility, the fol-
lowing standards were applied:
EN 55022: 2006, Class B
EN 61000-3-2: 2006
EN 61000-3-3: 1995+A1: 2001+A2: 2005
EN 55024:1998+A1:2001=A2:2003
IEC61000-4-2: 2001
IEC61000-4-3: 2006
IEC61000-4-4: 2004
IEC61000-4-5: 2005
IEC61000-4-6: 2006
IEC61000-4-8: 2001
IEC61000-4-11: 2004

Contents
1. Introduction ................................................................ 4
1.1 Overview .........................................................................4
1.2 Features ..........................................................................6
2. Hardware Installation ............................................... 10
2.1 Before You First Installing................................................. 10
2.2 Board Layout.................................................................. 10
2.3 Installation..................................................................... 14
2.4 SAS Cables .................................................................... 21
2.4.1 Internal Min SAS 4i to SATA Cable ............................... 21
2.4.2 Internal Min SAS 4i to 4xSFF-8482 Cable....................... 22
2.4.3 Internal Min SAS 4i (SFF-8087) to Internal Min SAS 4i (SFF-
8087) cable ....................................................................... 22
2.4.4 External Min SAS 4x Drive Boxes and Drive Expanders .... 23
2.5 LED Cables..................................................................... 24
2.5.1 Recognizing a Drive Failure .......................................... 27
2.5.2 Replacing a Failed Drive .............................................. 28
2.6 Summary of the installation.............................................. 28

INTRODUCTION
4
1. Introduction
This section presents a brief overview of the 6Gb/s SAS RAID con-
troller, ARC-1215-4x/ARC-1225-8x (PCIe 3.0 x8 external 6Gb/s SAS/
SATA RAID controller), ARC-1215-4i/ARC-1225-8i (PCIe 3.0 x8 internal
6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID controllers).
1.1 Overview
SAS 2.0 is designed for much higher speed data transfer than
previous available and backward compatibility with SAS 1.0. The
6Gb/s SAS interface supports both 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s SAS/SATA
disk drives for data-intensive applications and 6Gb/s or 3Gb/s
SATA drives for low-cost bulk storage of reference data. The ARC-
1215-4i/ARC-1225-8i support directly attach 4/8 SAS ports via
1/2 internal SFF-8087 connector. The ARC-1215-4x/ARC-1225-8x
support directly attach 4/8 SAS ports via 1/2 external SFF-8088
connector. Each port on the SAS controllers supports SAS and/
or SATA devices. Since there is no expander support on those
boards, this can meet the customer inquiry SAS solution (using
same enclosure) to replace SATA solution. The ARC-1215-4i/4x and
ARC-1225-8i/8x RAID controllers only support directly attach to
4/8 SAS/SATA drives without supporting the expand function. The
ARC-12x5 series default support 1GB on board ECC DDR3-1333
SDRAM memory.
The ARC-12x5-4i/8i RAID controllers are low-prole PCIe cards,
ideal for 1U and 2U rack-mount systems without needing the ex-
pansion capability. These controllers utilize the same RAID kernel
that has been eld-proven in existing external RAID controller
products, allowing Areca to quickly bring stable and reliable PCIe
3.0 6Gb/s SAS RAID controllers to the market.
Unparalleled Performance
The 6Gb/s SAS RAID controllers raise the standard to higher per-
formance levels with several enhancements including new high
performance dual core ROC Processor, a DDR3-1333 memory
architecture and high performance PCIe 3.0 x8 lane host interface
bus interconnection. The low prole controllers by default support

INTRODUCTION
5
on-board 1G of ECC DDR3-1333 SDRAM memory. The optional bat-
tery backup module provides power to the cache if it contains data
not yet written to the drives when power is lost. The test result is
against overall performance compared to other 6Gb/s SAS RAID
controllers. The powerful new ROC processors integrated 8 6Gb/s
SAS ports on chip delivers high performance for servers and work-
stations.
Unsurpassed Data Availability
As storage capacities continue to rapidly increase, users need
greater level of disk drive fault tolerance, which can be imple-
mented without doubling the investment in disk drives. The RAID
6 can offer fault tolerance greater that RAID 1 or RAID 5 but only
consumes the capacity of 2 disk drives for distributed parity data.
The 6Gb/s SAS RAID controllers with extreme performance RAID
6 engine installed provide the highest RAID 6 feature to meet this
requirement. The controller can concurrently compute two parity
blocks and get very similar RAID 5 performance.
The 6Gb/s SAS RAID controllers can also provide RAID levels 0, 1,
1E, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60, Single Disk or JBOD for maximum con-
guration exibility. Its high data availability and protection derives
from the following capabilities: Online RAID Capacity Expansion,
Array Roaming, Online RAID Level / Stripe Size Migration, Global
Online Spare, Automatic Drive Failure Detection, Automatic Failed
Drive Rebuilding, Disk Hot-Swap, Online Background Rebuilding,
Instant Availability/Background Initialization, Auto Reassign Sector,
Redundant Flash Image and Battery Backup Module. Greater than
Two TB Support allows for very large volume set application in 64-
bit environment such as data-mining and managing large data-
bases.
Maximum Interoperability
The 6Gb/s SAS RAID controller support broad operating system in-
cluding Windows 8/Server 2012(R2)/7/2008/Vista/XP/2003, Linux
(Open Source), FreeBSD (Open Source), Solaris (Open Source),
Mac, VMware and more, along with key system monitoring features
such as enclosure management (Serial Bus & SGPIO) and SNMP
function. Our products and technology are based on extensive

INTRODUCTION
6
testing and validation process; leverage Areca SAS or SATA RAID
controller eld-proven compatibility with operating systems, moth-
erboards, applications and device drivers.
Easy RAID Management
The controllers contain an embedded McBIOS RAID manager that
can access via hot key at M/B BIOS boot-up screen. This pre-boot
McBIOS RAID manager can use to simplify the setup and manage-
ment of RAID controller. The controller rmware also contains a
browser-based McRAID storage manager which can be accessed
through the Ethernet port or ArcHttp proxy server in Windows,
Linux, FreeBSD and more environments. The McRAID storage man-
ager allows local and remote to create and modify RAID set, vol-
ume set, and monitor RAID status from standard web browser. The
Single Admin Portal (SAP) monitor utility can support one applica-
tion to scan multiple RAID units in the network.
1.2 Features
Controller Architecture
• Dual Core RAID-on-Chip (ROC) 800 MHz processor
• PCIe 3.0 x8 lane host interface
• 1GB on-board DDR3-1333 SDRAM with ECC
• Write-through or write-back cache support
• Support up to 4/8 internal or 4/8 external 6Gb/s SAS ports
• ARC-1215-4i/4x supports up to 4 x 6Gb/s SAS/SATA HDDs
• ARC-1225-8i/8x supports up to 8 x 6Gb/s SAS/SATA HDDs
• Multi-adapter support for large storage requirements
• BIOS boot support for greater fault tolerance
• BIOS PnP (plug and play) and BBS (BIOS boot specication)
support
• Support EFI BIOS for Mac Pro
• NVRAM for RAID event & transaction log
• Redundant ash image for controller availability
• Battery Backup Module (BBM) ready (optional)
• RoHS compliant
RAID Features
• RAID level 0, 1, 10(1E), 3, 5, 6, 30, 50, 60, Single Disk or JBOD

INTRODUCTION
7
• Multiple RAID 0 and RAID 10(1E) support (RAID 00 and
RAID100)
• Multiple RAID selection
• Congurable stripe size up to 1024KB
• Support HDD rmware update
• Online array roaming
• Online RAID level/stripe size migration
• Online capacity expansion and RAID level migration simultane-
ously
• Online volume set growth
• Instant availability and background initialization
• Support global and dedicated hot spare
• Automatic drive insertion/removal detection and rebuilding
• Support for native 4K and 512 byte sector SAS and SATA devices
• Multiple pairs SSD/HDD disk clone function
• SSD automatic monitor clone (AMC) support
• Controller level hardware encryption support
• Support intelligent power management to save energy and ex-
tend service life
Monitors/Notication
• System status indication through global HDD activity/fault con-
nector, individual activity/fault connector, LCD/I2C connector and
alarm buzzer
• SMTP support for email notication
• SNMP support for remote manager
• Enclosure management (serial bus and SGPIO) ready
RAID Management
• Field-upgradeable rmware in ash ROM
In-Band Manager
• Hot key "boot-up" McBIOS RAID manager via M/B BIOS
• Web browser-based McRAID storage manager via ArcHttp proxy
server for all operating systems
• Support Command Line Interface (CLI)
• API library for customer to write monitor utility
• Single Admin Portal (SAP) monitor utility
Out-of-Band Manager
• Firmware-embedded web browser-based McRAID storage man-
ager, SMTP manager, SNMP agent and Telnet function via Ether-

INTRODUCTION
8
net port
• API library for customer to write monitor utility
• Support push button and LCD display panel (optional)
Operating System
• Windows 8/Server 2012/7/2008/Vista/XP/2003
• Linux
• FreeBSD
• VMware
• Solaris 10/11 x86/x86_64
• Mac OS 10.4.x or higher
(For latest supported OS listing visit http://www.areca.com.tw)
Important:
Be sure to update the ArcMSR.kext driver shipping with Mac
OS X to V1.3.7 or later from the software CD or from the
Areca website.
6Gb/s SAS RAID Controllers
Model Name ARC-1215-4i ARC-1225-8i
I/O Processor Dual Core RAID-on-Chip (ROC) 800 MHz Processor
Form Factor Low Prole: 64.4(H) x 169.5(L) mm
Host Bus Type PCIe 3.0 x 8 Lanes
Driver Connector 1 x SFF-8087 2 x SFF-8087
Drive Support 4 x SAS/SATA 8 x SAS/SATA
RAID Level 0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6, Single Disk
or JBOD
0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6, 30, 50, 60,
Single Disk or JBOD
On-Board Cache 1GB on-board DDR3-1333 SDRAM with ECC
Management
Port
In-Band: PCIe
Out-of-Band: BIOS, LCD (Optional) and LAN Port
Enclosure Ready Individual Activity/Faulty Header, Serial Bus and SGPIO

INTRODUCTION
9
Note:
Low-prole bracket has included on the low prole board shipping
package.
6Gb/s SAS RAID Controllers
Model Name ARC-1215-4x ARC-1225-8x
I/O Processor Dual Core RAID-on-Chip (ROC) 800 MHz Processor
Form Factor Low Prole: 64.4(H) x 169.5(L) mm
Host Bus Type PCIe 3.0 x 8 Lanes
Driver Connector 1 x SFF-8088 2 x SFF-8088
Drive Support 4 x SAS/SATA 8 x SAS/SATA
RAID Level 0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6, Single Disk
or JBOD
0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6, 30, 50, 60,
Single Disk or JBOD
On-Board Cache 1GB on-board DDR3-1333 SDRAM with ECC
Management
Port
In-Band: PCIe
Out-of-Band: BIOS and LCD (Optional)
Enclosure Ready External Serial Bus

HARDWARE INSTALLATION
10
2. Hardware Installation
This section describes the procedures for installing the 6Gb/s SAS RAID
controllers.
2.1 Before You First Installing
Thanks for purchasing the 6Gb/s SAS RAID controller as your RAID
data storage subsystem. This user manual gives simple step-by-
step instructions for installing and conguring the 6Gb/s SAS RAID
controller. To ensure personal safety and to protect your equipment
and data, reading the following information package list carefully
before you begin installing.
Package Contents
If your package is missing any of the items listed below, con-
tact your local dealers before you install. (Disk drives and disk
mounting brackets are not included)
• 1 x 6Gb/s SAS RAID controller in an ESD-protective bag
• 1 x Installation CD – containing driver, relative software, an
electronic version of this manual and other related manual
• 1 x Quick start guide
• 1 x Low-prole bracket
2.2 Board Layout
The controller can support a family included 8 ports models as well
as 4/8 internal/external ports. This section provides the board lay-
out and connector/jumper for the 6Gb/s SAS RAID controller.