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August 15, 2008
16 Channel, RAID 6, Bootable, SAS Controller
A Review of the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 PCI-Express to SAS/SATA RAID Controller
By Arthur Whalem
easy configuration. The controller also features an alarm and SMTP email notification should a hard disk failure occur. The purpose of this article is to determine how the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 will perform with the Apple Mac Pro.System Requirements
Requires an available PCI-Express slot.
Supports Mac OS X 10.4.x or higher, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
Requires SAS or SATA 3.5" hard drives.
External mini-SAS connector not included.
PCI-Express x8 interface.
SMTP support for email notification.
Optional SAS expander required for use with more than 16 hard disks.
What's Included?
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 PCI-Express to SAS RAID controller includes an eight lane PCI-Express host adapter with 512MB of memory, three 29" mini-SAS (SSF-8087) cables, RS232 cable, 170 page printed users guide and a CD with software drivers, firmware and documentation.
InstallationPCI-Express also known as PCIe, communicates using 250MB per second data lanes. The PCI-Express bandwidth is determined by the number of data lanes that the device can accommodate. One lane, four lanes, eight lanes, or 16 lanes are some of the typical PCIe configurations available.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 SAS host adapter is an eight lane controller. Mac Pro users will need to install the mraid_macpro driver found in the "PACKAGES" folder on the Areca install CD. The base Areca driver is included with Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard". However, the user will need to install the Areca command line and/or web manager to access the various RAID options. During this review, AMUG utilized the Areca MRAID Mac Pro driver dated November 26, 2007. It can be found on the Areca ftp site and on the CD included with the controller. The beauty of the Areca software is that it will work with any Areca PCIe card installed in a Mac Pro. Firmware version 1.4.5 dated 4-29-2008 was installed on the ARC-1680ix-12 along with the ARC1680EFI BOOT ROM which allows Mac OS X to boot from hard drives or RAID sets mounted on the ARC-1680ix-12.
Once the Areca Mac OS X software is installed the user can open a web browser window to port 81 to configure the ARC-1680ix-12. The browser address is formatted as http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xx:81/ with the computers IP address placed where the xxx.xxx.xxx.xx is listed. If the user is configuring the computer locally the address http://localhost:81/ can be utilized. The default user name is admin with a password of 0000. Once the web interface is open, it can be bookmarked for easy future access. Clicking on the "Quick Create" menu within the web interface provides an amazingly easy method for establishing RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 6 and 10 configurations.
The ARC-1680ix-12 also supports RAID levels 30, 50 and 60. To do this, use the "Create RAID set" menu to setup two equal sized RAID sets. Next, use the "Create RAID30/50/60" menu to configure the RAID 30, 50 or 60 disk array.
If the Mac Pro user would rather utilize Disk Utility to configure the hard drives attached to the ARC-1680ix-12, the web interface can be used to set the controller to JBOD mode. Clicking on the "System Configuration" menu and setting the JBOD/RAID setting to JBOD allows Disk Utility to work individually with each of the hard disks attached to the ARC-1680ix-12.
When the ARC-1680ix-12 is set to JBOD mode all of the controllers RAID features are disabled and the hard drives are managed by the operating system. As most users will purchase the ARC-1680ix-12 for its SAS and awesome RAID capabilities they will probably leave the card in RAID mode. However, it is nice to know that hard drives connected to the ARC-1680ix-12 have the ability to be controlled directly by Mac OS X or with the Areca RAID engine.
The Apple Mac Pro 2.8 GHz (January 2008) model has four PCI-Express slots. Slots one (video card) and two are configured as PCI Express 2.0 sixteen-lane PCIe slots. PCI Express slots 3 and 4 each provide PCIe revision 1, four-lane bandwidth. Installing the ARC-1680ix-12 in slot 2 will provide maximum performance.
PCIe slot 2 is shown in the Mac Pro system profiler window above. The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 is displayed in the window as a RAID Controller with a card name of "pci17d3,1680".
Cable Options
External Port - The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 provides an external mini-SAS connector that can be configured with a SAS expander for mounting up to 128 hard disks or with a direct connect four drive enclosure. The external mini-SAS (SSF-8088) connector allows the host adapter to accommodate a wide range of SAS and SATA enclosure expansion options. Cables are purchased separately based on the users enclosure configuration. Some of the available cable options include:
2) External mini-SAS to eSATA (I connector) for eSATA enclosures $59.
3) External mini-SAS (SSF-8088) to (SSF-8088) for SAS enclosures $55.
During these tests, the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 external mini-SAS port was used with an Enhance UltraStor RS16 JS 16 Bay RAID Storage System using the (SSF-8088) to (SSF-8088) data cable. When the external port was used with a direct connect 4-bay enclosure the (SSF-8088) to Infiniband data cable was installed. The external SAS expander capability of the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 allows up to 128 hard drives to be connected using up to eight sixteen bay SAS Expander enclosures like the UltraStor RS16 JS.
Internal Ports - The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 provides three internal mini-SAS (SSF-8087) connectors. AMUG tested various methods for accessing these ports with the Apple Mac Pro. The results are listed below.
Option #1 - Using mini-SAS (SSF-8087) to multilane data cables provided the best method for accessing the internal ports on the Areca ARC-1680ix-12. AMUG tested this option using CS Electronics model iSAS-7370/1m data cables with the Areca ARC-1680ix-12. With this configuration the SAS cables are snaked out of an empty PCI slot and connected to a multilane enclosure. This configuration is not as elegant as an external port, but it provides optimal performance results. Some of the possible multilane enclosures that will work with this configuration include the 12-bay
Norco DS-1240 and the 8-bay EnhanceBox E8-ML. The advantage of using a mini-SAS (SSF-8087) to multilane cable is that high performance is maintained as there are no excess adapters that might slow the connection.Option #2 - AMUG discovered that several vendors are offering SSF-8087 to SSF-8088 adapters in the form of a PCI bracket. This sounded like a clean mounting solution for accessing the ARC-1680ix-12 internal ports. iStarUSA sells the zAGE-H-8788-QU Quad Mini SAS X4 Adapter ($86.99) and several other vendors sell a similar adapter with single, dual and quad mini-SAS ports. This PCI based adapter can convert up to four SSF-8087 internal cables to external SSF-8088 connectors. Unfortunately, when AMUG tested the adapter with the 29" SSF-8087 cables that are included with the ARC-1680ix-12 controller, performance measurably deteriorated. In some cases, reliability was also compromised. Once the adapter was removed disk reliability and performance levels returned to normal. My guess is that the extra connections required by the SSF-8087 to SSF-8088 adapter may have caused a reduction in the signal strength between the hard disks and the controller.
Based on these tests it is hard to recommend using a SSF-8087 to SSF-8088 adapter like the image shown above. Most users purchasing the ARC-1680ix-12 are performance driven and will not want to risk using a data cable configuration that may reduce performance or suffer from reliability issues. During the AMUG review, using mini-SAS (SSF-8087) to multilane cables provided higher performance and higher reliability when accessing the ARC-1680ix-12 internal ports for use with external multilane data storage enclosures.
Features
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) RAID controller supports both SATA and SAS hard drives along with SAS expanders and direct connect configurations. The ability of the SAS controller to support both SATA and SAS interfaces provides users with several configuration options.
The sixteen channel ARC-1680ix-12 is powered by an Intel IOP348 I/O processor. This chip integrates an I/O processor with a SAS/SATA I/O controller, combining RAID and SAS technologies. The ARC-1680ix-12 utilizes the 1200 MHz version of the Intel IOP348 I/O processor and 512MB of on-board DDR2-533 memory with ECC protection (upgradeable to 4GB). Areca provides a heat sink with a cooling fan that enhances processor cooling while maintaining quiet operation of the Mac Pro. The ARC-1680ix-12 combines a sixteen channel 3Gbps SAS/SATA controller with hardware RAID 5/6 acceleration. By off loading RAID calculations from the host CPU to the ARC-1680ix-12, overall system performance of the Mac Pro can be improved while providing large scale data storage configuration options.The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 RAID engine provides both high performance and high reliability. It supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60 or JBOD. RAID 6 offers fault tolerance greater than RAID 1 or RAID 5 while utilizing the capacity of two disk drives for distributed parity data. Data is first striped on a block level across a set of disk drives. Next, a second parity set is calculated and written across all of the hard drives. This process allows RAID 6 to provide a high level of redundancy that can recover even with two simultaneous hard disk failures. The Areca driver features automatic rebuilding and supports configurations with up to three hot spares mounted.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 PCI-Express 8x interface can be used to mount up to sixteen SAS/SATA hard drives in a direct connect configuration or up to 128 hard drives with SAS expansion enclosures. The use of SAS expanders with the ARC-1680ix-12 provides the Mac Pro with amazing on-line data storage capabilities. The Areca RAID controller architecture supports up to 32 hard drives per RAID volume, up to 128 volumes, up to 32 enclosures and 8 SAS expanders. The controller provides write-through or write-back cache support, array roaming, online RAID level/stripe size migration, online capacity expansion & RAID level migration simultaneously, online volume set growth, pass through disk support, instant availability and background initialization, automatic drive insertion / removal detection and rebuilding, hot swap, SMART (within browser), Mac OS X sleep support, staggered spin-up, alarm buzzer, SMTP support for email notification and provides upgradeable firmware. When the ARC-1680ix-12 is upgraded using the ARC1680EFI BIOS it provides Mac OS X boot capability. Drivers are available for Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003, Linux, FreeBSD, Novell Netware 6.5, Solaris 10 X86/X86_64 and Mac OS X. The ARC-1680ix-12 comes with a CD and an in depth users manual.
Not Supported
Dual Controllers - the Mac driver for the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 will not recognize more than one Areca controller installed in the Mac Pro at once. It would be nice if this could be upgraded to support multiple Areca controllers for advanced bandwidth options.
No Traditional Macintosh SMART Support - While the Areca web interface can be configured to display SMART data, the driver does not pass this information to Disk Utility. As a result, Disk Utility will indicate that SMART is not supported on any volume connected to the controller. Users will need to use the Areca web interface for monitoring SMART data.
SATA Port Multipliers - None of the SAS controllers that AMUG has tested can support SATA PM enclosures. If you already have SATA PM enclosure(s) this may be important.
Energy Usage
According to the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 controller utilizes approximately 21 watts while idle when installed in the Apple Mac Pro 2.8 GHz model. This was determined by measuring the energy usage with and without the card installed while the computer was idle for at least 10 minutes. The difference between the two readings was 21 watts. Once the hard disks mounted on the controller are actively copying data the energy usage increases to approximately 32-40 watts. This high performance controller utilizes the 1200MHz Intel IOP348 I/O processor which requires a little more power than RAID 6 controllers with a 800MHz or a 500MHz processor.
RAID Types
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 provides many RAID functions that Macintosh users may be unfamiliar with. While RAID 0 and RAID 1 functions are provided in Disk Utility, the ARC-1680ix-12 can support several additional redundant RAID types.
RAID 3 - disk striping and complete data redundancy provided by a dedicated parity drive. RAID 3 breaks up data into smaller blocks, calculates parity by performing an exclusive-or on the blocks, and then writes the blocks to all but one drive in the array. The parity data created during the exclusive-or is then written to the last drive in the array. If only a single drive fails, the data should be recoverable.
RAID 5 - stripes data at the block level across several hard drives while distributing parity among these drives. If a single hard drive fails, RAID 5 can usually recover using the rebuild features. If more than one drive fails the data on the RAID is lost. This system provides redundancy with the least amount of hard drives. Backup of data is still necessary with RAID 5, but this array provides some crash protection while a striped RAID set provides none.
RAID 6 - stripes data at the block level across several hard drives. Next, a dual set of parity data is calculated and distributed across all of the drives. RAID 6 is similar to RAID 5, but it performs dual parity computations. Up to two hard drives can fail simultaneously and RAID 6 can usually still rebuild the volume. RAID 6 provides a high level of redundancy. However, if more than two drives fail, data on the RAID will be lost.RAID 10 - creates a striped RAID set with half of the hard drives and a mirror of each hard drive is created so that an exact duplicate of the striped RAID set is available. This configuration can still operate at full speed with a hard disk failure. Unmounting a failed hard drive and inserting another hard drive of the same capacity or larger will allow the RAID 10 to rebuild. Any single disk can fail and no data will be lost as long as the mirror or the original disk is functional. Backup of critical files is still prudent but the redundancy of a RAID 10 disk array is very good. The Areca RAID 10 implementation offers advanced flexibility as the number of disks in the array can be even or odd.
RAID 30 - is a combination of multiple RAID 3 volumes striped in a RAID 0 configuration. Two or more volumes are required to create a RAID 30 disk array. Up to one hard disk in each RAID 3 set can fail and the volume can still usually be rebuilt.
RAID 50 - is a combination of multiple RAID 5 volumes striped in a RAID 0 configuration. Two or more volumes are required to create a RAID 50 disk array. Up to one hard disk in each RAID 5 set can fail and the volume can still usually be rebuilt.
RAID 60 - is a combination of multiple RAID 6 volumes striped in a RAID 0 configuration. Two or more volumes are required to create a RAID 60 disk array. Up to two hard disks in each RAID 6 set can fail and the volume can still usually be rebuilt.
PerformanceThe Areca ARC-1680ix-12 was tested while installed in slot 2 of an Apple Mac Pro 2.8 GHz running Mac OS X 10.5.4. Samsung 1TB 3.5" SATA hard drives were used to create various RAID configurations while mounted inside the 12-bay NORCO DS-1240 enclosure. DiskTester 2.0 10GB read and write tests were performed using a run area test so that this article could display how the RAID performed. DiskTester is a Terminal application that measures the combined performance of a volume and the Mac OS X operating system. Using the command: ./disktester run-area-test --chunk-size 128M --test-size 10G --delta-percent 10 DriveName, puts DiskTester to work testing how the RAID will perform when empty, 10% full, 20% full and so on. The table below displays how the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 performed when using RAID 5 and RAID 6 configurations.
ARC-1680ix-12 - Twelve Drive RAID 5 & 6 Comparison
 |
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 747 | 817 | 751 | 779 | 682 | 692 | 667 | 665 |
| 10% | 748 | 833 | 751 | 783 | 688 | 707 | 677 | 671 |
| 20% | 761 | 913 | 755 | 903 | 697 | 854 | 681 | 802 |
| 30% | 771 | 921 | 762 | 922 | 700 | 869 | 682 | 840 |
| 40% | 767 | 935 | 761 | 923 | 701 | 857 | 684 | 827 |
| 50% | 767 | 940 | 758 | 858 | 702 | 853 | 686 | 772 |
| 60% | 760 | 876 | 758 | 800 | 698 | 797 | 682 | 721 |
| 70% | 739 | 869 | 742 | 784 | 693 | 770 | 681 | 695 |
| 80% | 763 | 743 | 705 | 667 | 694 | 681 | 642 | 602 |
| 90% | 719 | 632 | 635 | 590 | 633 | 580 | 571 | 520 |
| 100% | 621 | 536 | 562 | 494 | 555 | 488 | 504 | 441 |
| Average | 742 | 820 | 722 | 773 | 677 | 741 | 650 | 687 |
| Format Size | 10TB | 9.09TB | 9.09TB | 8.19TB | ||||
| Stripe Size | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 | ||||
| Hot Spare | No | Yes | No | Yes | ||||
| Ports | 1,3,E | 1,3,E | 1,3,E | 1,3,E | ||||
| Cables | iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
| Memory | 512 | 512 | 512 | 512 | ||||
| Redundancy | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
The performance results above indicate that an ARC-1680ix-12 using twelve Samsung 1TB SATA hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration with the NORCO DS-1240 12 Bay Infiniband Multilane enclosure and an Apple Mac Pro 2.8GHz can provide average read and write performance of over 740MB/sec. Using eleven hard drives to configure the RAID 5 with a hot spare reduces the average write performance to 722MB/sec. and the average read performance to 773MB/sec. This setup reduces performance by the speed of one disk drive but provides the ability to automatically rebuild the RAID 5 volume should a single hard disk fail.The ARC-1680ix-12 RAID 6 configuration with twelve 1TB Samsung SATA hard drives was able to provide average write performance of 677MB/sec. and average read performance of 741MB/sec.. This is almost as fast as a RAID 5 setup with a hot spare. RAID 6 is required to calculate an additional set of parity data and distribute it across all of the hard drives. As such, I would expect it to be slightly slower. The 1200MHz Intel IOP348 I/O processor mounted on the ARC-1680ix-12 makes this type of RAID 6 performance possible.
While RAID 6 provides twice the redundancy of RAID 5, some users may want to consider using an ARC-1680ix-12 RAID 6 configuration with a hot spare. This allows the RAID 6 to rebuild automatically in the case of a hard disk failure. Servers that are difficult to get to or off site are good candidates for hot spare usage. Hot spares setup with the ARC-1680ix-12 do not spin up until they are needed. This feature helps keep the spare from experiencing extra wear while waiting to be called into service.
As the ARC-1680ix-12 controller can support multiple RAID sets, some users may want to know what performance can be obtained with an eight drive RAID 5 or 6 configuration. The eight drive test data is shown in the table below.
Areca ARC-1680ix-12 - Eight Drive RAID 5 & 6 Comparison
|
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 509 | 594 | 483 | 536 | 419 | 497 | 406 | 429 |
| 10% | 527 | 566 | 495 | 504 | 447 | 476 | 413 | 407 |
| 20% | 518 | 679 | 497 | 585 | 450 | 567 | 415 | 486 |
| 30% | 529 | 668 | 500 | 574 | 453 | 566 | 415 | 474 |
| 40% | 528 | 648 | 497 | 553 | 451 | 552 | 416 | 460 |
| 50% | 528 | 616 | 501 | 531 | 453 | 526 | 417 | 443 |
| 60% | 530 | 584 | 498 | 506 | 453 | 499 | 408 | 426 |
| 70% | 539 | 544 | 489 | 458 | 450 | 465 | 403 | 383 |
| 80% | 492 | 472 | 433 | 402 | 430 | 402 | 362 | 336 |
| 90% | 441 | 407 | 379 | 350 | 383 | 350 | 318 | 294 |
| 100% | 388 | 345 | 333 | 298 | 332 | 296 | 264 | 194 |
| Average | 502 | 557 | 464 | 482 | 429 | 472 | 385 | 394 |
| Format Size | 6.37TB | 5.46TB | 5.46TB | 4.55TB | ||||
| Stripe Size | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 | ||||
| Hot Spare | No | Yes | No | Yes | ||||
| Ports | 1,3 | 1,3 | 1,3 | 1,3 | ||||
| Cables | iSAS | 7370/1m | iSAS | 7370/1m | iSAS | 7370/1m | iSAS | 7370/1m |
| Memory | 512 | 512 | 512 | 512 | ||||
| Redundancy | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
RAID 0 & 3
RAID users looking for high speed will find RAID 0 is the top performer. While RAID 0 provides zero redundancy, it delivers the fastest performance. Using the same twelve Samsung 1TB SATA hard drives, the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 configured in RAID 0 mode using the web interface was able to provide an average write speed of 805MB/sec. and an average read speed of 862MB/sec.
ARC-1680ix-12 - Twelve Drive RAID 0 & 3 Comparison
|
| Area Full | write | read | write | read | write | read | write | read |
| empty | 824 | 917 | 818 | 839 | 693 | 903 | 702 | 836 |
| 10% | 818 | 923 | 807 | 837 | 689 | 924 | 708 | 904 |
| 20% | 822 | 935 | 820 | 853 | 699 | 915 | 697 | 935 |
| 30% | 824 | 935 | 825 | 863 | 704 | 915 | 714 | 908 |
| 40% | 827 | 935 | 823 | 861 | 715 | 909 | 717 | 910 |
| 50% | 827 | 932 | 820 | 856 | 718 | 911 | 708 | 834 |
| 60% | 826 | 931 | 816 | 872 | 720 | 869 | 712 | 790 |
| 70% | 823 | 912 | 819 | 849 | 720 | 836 | 706 | 770 |
| 80% | 823 | 793 | 819 | 796 | 716 | 739 | 691 | 686 |
| 90% | 766 | 688 | 753 | 688 | 694 | 632 | 634 | 584 |
| 100% | 676 | 583 | 675 | 581 | 620 | 535 | 561 | 488 |
| Average | 805 | 862 | 800 | 809 | 699 | 826 | 686 | 786 |
| Format Size | 10.9TB | 10.9TB | 10.0TB | 9.09TB | ||||
| Stripe Size | 128 | 128 | NA | NA | ||||
| Hot Spare | No | No | No | Yes | ||||
| Ports | 1,3,E | 1,3,E | 1,3,E | 1,3,E | ||||
| Cables | iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
iSAS | 7370/1m Multilane |
| Memory | 512 | 512 | 512 | 512 | ||||
| Redundancy | No | No | Yes | Yes |
When the ARC-1680ix-12 was configured in JBOD mode with Disk Utility used to setup the RAID 0, the read speed of the RAID was reduced by approximately 6% on average. Based on this information, users will want to keep the ARC-1680ix-12 configured in RAID mode for increased performance results.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 also supports RAID 3 configurations. RAID 3 provides high performance for transfer rate intensive applications and can recover from the failure of a single hard drive. According to these tests the RAID 3 DiskTester write performance is slightly less than the RAID 5 configuration, but the read performance is slightly higher.
UltraStor RS16 JS SAS Expander Performance
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 supports up to 128 hard disks with the use of SAS expanders. AMUG tested the ARC-1680ix-12 with the Enhance enterprise class ULTRASTOR™ RS16 JS ($2,895). The UltraStor RS16 JS enclosure contains an internal SAS expander that supports up to sixteen SAS or SATA hard drives by simply connecting the external mini-SAS port of the ARC-1680ix-12 to the enclosure. Up to eight 16-bay enclosures can be daisy chained together to support up to 128 hard drives. The built-in SAS expander technology of the UltraStor RS16 JS reduces cable clutter while providing expandability and excellent performance.
ARC-1680ix-12 with Enhance RS16 JS SAS Expander
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