User manual
INTRODUCTION
10
1. Introduction
This section presents a brief overview of the SATA RAID Series con-
troller, ARC-1110/1120/1130/1130ML/1160/1160ML/1160ML2/1170
(4/8/12/16/24-port PCI-X SATA RAID Controllers), ARC-1201(OEM
version 8-port PCIex1 controller) and ARC-1210/1220/1230/1231ML/
1260/1261ML/1280/1280ML (4/8/12/16/24-port PCIe SATA RAID
Controllers).
1.1 Overview
The ARC-11xx and ARC-12xx series of high-performance Serial ATA
RAID controllers support a maximum of 4, 8, 12, 16, or 24 SATA II
peripheral devices (depending on model) on a single controller. The
ARC-11xx series for the PCI-X bus and the ARC-12xx series for the
PCI-Express bus. When properly congured, these SATA control-
lers provide non-stop service with a high degree of fault tolerance
through the use of RAID technology and can also provide advanced
array management features.
The 4 and 8 port SATA RAID controllers are low-prole PCI cards,
ideal for 1U and 2U rack-mount systems. These controllers utilize
the same RAID kernel that has been eld-proven in Areca existing
external RAID controllers, allowing Areca to quickly bring stable
and reliable RAID controllers to the market.
Unparalleled Performance
The SATA RAID controllers provide reliable data protection for
desktops, workstations, and servers. These cards set the stan-
dard with enhancements that include a high-performance Intel I/O
Processor, a new memory architecture, and a high performance
PCI bus interconnection. The 8/12/16/24-port controllers with the
RAID 6 engine built-in can offer extreme-availability RAID 6 func-
tionality. This engine can concurrently compute two parity blocks
with performance very similar to RAID 5. The controllers by default
support 256MB of ECC SDRAM memory for Intel IOP331/332/333.
ARC-1201 RAID controller only supports 128MB DDR2-400 SDRAM.
The 12/16/24 port controllers support one DDR333 SODIMM socket
that allows for upgrading up to 1GB of memory. The 12/16/24