Areca RAID Card.

[Nikolas Britton]

On 7/22/06, Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC <chad at shire.net> wrote:
>
> On Jul 22, 2006, at 4:14 AM, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>
> > The motherboard I just bought, SuperMicro X7DBE, has both PCI-X
> > 133MHz/64-bit and PCI-Express 8x slots, I can't decide what version of
> > the Areca card to get... I'd like to see some benchmarks of the
> > ARC-11xx (PCI-X) Vs. the ARC-12xx (PCI-Express).
> >
> > The PCIe device has a faster bus (PCIe 8x = 2000MB/s) but PCI-X is
> > tried and true and not too shabby (PCI-X 133/64 = 850MB/s) ether.
> >
> > I have the option of ether a 1130ML (Infiniband connections) or a plan
> > jane 1230. I've had troubles with SATA cables in the passed so the
> > 1130ML is very desirable from this stand point. Another thing I'm
> > worried about is the 1230 will have to much weight on the PCIe 8x slot
> > because of all the SATA cables. and routing them all is a pain. Does
> > anyone have a source for an ARC-1230ML? On the other hand I've never
> > tried the latching SATA cables yet... but the ARC-1130 is $40
> > cheaper...
>
> I was just looking at the difference between the 1130 and the
> 1130ML.  ML cables are EXPENSIVE and look heavier than 4 normal
> cables...

But they latch on and you only need 1 ML cable for every 4 SATA
cables. The PCI-X card/slot should be sturdy enough but I don't think
PCIe is, I've played with PCIe 1x cards and their super small...
picture a normal low profile PCI card, now take half that. Maybe they
don't make them (ARC-12xxML) for this reason.

> I just ordered an 1120 from <http://www.topmicrousa.com/controllers--
> tekram.html> and they were the cheapest I've seen.
>
> Will be needing an 1130 myself soon I think.
>
> Can't help you with the 1130 vs 1230.  I would think the PCIe would
> be the way to go for future proofing your investment.
>

Yes I think your right here. If you look at the "ATTO STRs and cache
transfer rates"[1] the ARC-1120 (PCI-X) is up against the bus limit.
theoretically the 1120/1220 could do up to 2400MB/s (8 drives *
SATA-II transfer limit of 300MB/s).

"The results of the Areca ARC-1120 in the RAID 0 tests cleary show
this adapter does not have any trouble with ATTO's tiny dataset.
Floating high above the crowd, the ARC-1120 has a perfect view on the
struggles of the other adapters. Exceeding 750MB/s, the transfer rates
from the Areca ARC-1120 are almost equal to the effective bandwidth of
the 133MHz PCI-X bus." [1]

[1] http://tweakers.net/reviews/557/18

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