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Areca card replacements?

T

tanwedar

n00b
Joined
Sep 22, 2009
Messages
5
Hi, my company is currently using a few Areca cards in a daisy chain across 4 3U chassis. We have a 1680-16 on the main board and the card from a 8020 module in each of the other chassis. The SAS goes from the main to the 2nd then from the 3nd to the third etc. The Areca cards are giving us some problems, also some 1261MLs are, and we're looking for a solution from another manufacturer for a similar setup.

So far though I'm not having but so easy of a time locating expander cards like the 8020 one. This could just be me being new to this type of card though.

Any suggestions?
 
Please be more specific about which card you have in which chassis.
Are you suggesting that the main system has a 1261ML and the other chassis all have ARC-8020s?
Also what drives are you using?
How many drives per chassis?
Where does the failure occur? like if take off the 4th daisy chain does it work? etc.
 
Chenbro makes SAS expanders like Areca, but the Arecas are definitely nicer (and of course Supermicro too, just within cases/enclosures only however). You really do need to be more specific about the problems you are having though.
 
We use two different sets actually.

For the single chassis which have 16 drives, either 1TB Seagates or 2TB WD, we use the 1261ML.

For the daisied ones we have a 1680ix-16 as the raid card and one 8020 per additional chassis below it. So far we have only added 3 chassis so we total 109TB usable. These cards have for the most part been working fine, though we are having problems with the drives showing up as bad and the array rebuilding, yet the drive shows as good and just a free drive if we reset the system. As for replacements on these we're just looking towards the future if Areca cards keep giving us issues.

The main problem we are having is with the 1261 cards. We're at a point where we're having more and more fail in an odd manner. The read fine, ~1200MB/s, but when we write to some of them they will give the BSoD every time. Yes we do have the newest firmware, bootrom etc.

The 1261s will be easier to replace as they do not have to chain down to other chassis, just taking suggestions on those. The 8020s are the ones that I'm not doing so well with finding a good replacement. It could just be my ignorance about the phrasing on some of the sites though.
 
With the 1680ix and the expanders - apologies if this is a stupid question - but are you sure that it's not the drives that are the issue? I've seen plenty of drives which work fine in a desktop but don't work well in a 24/7 environment, or don't work with a proper RAID controller. E.g. I've seen Samsung laptop drives work ok with a PERC6i for a few weeks and then crash the raid controller. Have you tried the drives with another RAID controller and had them working for extended periods? Are the drives on the Areca compatibility list?
 
Well unfortunately I was not in on the decision for choosing the drives, I'm just trying to clean up the problems people created. The drives are the WD20EADS, they are not on the list of drives but they only came out in January I believe. I have no clue how often Areca updates their compatibility list.

The drives hooked up to the 1261 cards are on the compatibility list though, and that's the ones that blue screen. Telling the large storage array to not auto-rebuilt makes the drives "going bad" not an issue with the WD, just looking for a fix if there was a quick one.

The biggest problem with the 1261 cards is that it is card by card problems, we can change out the RAID card with one we know works, and the whole chassis will work perfect, read and write.

Hope this cleared up what you were asking, if not then post more questions please :).

Thank you for the responses also.
 
tanwedar said:
Well unfortunately I was not in on the decision for choosing the drives, I'm just trying to clean up the problems people created. The drives are the WD20EADS, they are not on the list of drives but they only came out in January I believe. I have no clue how often Areca updates their compatibility list.

The drives hooked up to the 1261 cards are on the compatibility list though, and that's the ones that blue screen. Telling the large storage array to not auto-rebuilt makes the drives "going bad" not an issue with the WD, just looking for a fix if there was a quick one.

The biggest problem with the 1261 cards is that it is card by card problems, we can change out the RAID card with one we know works, and the whole chassis will work perfect, read and write.

Hope this cleared up what you were asking, if not then post more questions please :).

Thank you for the responses also.
Click to expand...

I would say upgrade the 1261s with 1680ix and be done.
Yea those drives are not on the compatibility list, and if they are not RE drives then you should prob have TLER enabled if havent done so already.
 
Ok, I'll definitely give that suggestion to the people up above me. Do you know of any internal cards like the ones in the ARC-8020s so we don't have to just rip out those cards and pay for the enclosure we won't use.
 
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