Areca Reveals 12Gb SAS 24-Bays Expander Module

Areca Technology Corporation announced the availability of ARC-8028 12Gb SAS expander module based upon the LSI Corporation 36-port LSISAS3X36R expander.

SI customers use the ARC-8028 directly mounted into a chassis to provide an affordable, scalable, high-performance 12Gb JBOD solution that enables our customers to expand capacity beyond the server to meet growing data requirements.

The expander module is designed with an integrated ARM Cortex-R4 processor for topology management functions such as discovery, enclosure and drive management, and LED management. It features three 12Gb Mini SAS HD SAS SFF-8644 ports; two host and one for expansion to additional JBOD enclosures. It is designed to fit into a stand-alone box and can be installed in a 5.25″ mounting shell.

ARC-8028 JBOD is qualified for using with ARC-1883 12Gb SAS RAID adapters. All ports operate at 12Gb, 6Gb and 3Gb SAS. It incorporates the latest enhancements in SAS along with new LSI DataBolt bandwidth optimizer technology. This is designed to help facilitate the industry transition to 12Gb SAS-enabled systems by allowing users to take advantage of 12Gb speeds while utilizing existing 6Gb drives and backplanes. Using DataBolt, the ARC-8028 buffers 6Gb data and then transfers it out to the host at 12Gb speeds in order to match the bandwidth between faster hosts and slower SAS or SATA devices.

The expander box contains an embedded expander manager that can access via in-band SES-2 over SMP protocol and out-of band RS-232 port. The Areca expander firmware and EPLD has implemented the SES-2 protocol and disk activity map to SGPIO based indicator LEDs.

In addition to meet different enclosure, ARC-8028 expander box has implemented autonomous chassis management of two power supplies status connectors, four fan monitor/speed control connectors through the SES-2 protocol. Firmware and configuration data including vendor identification strings can be customized or tuned for each customer.