Areca: Availability of ARC-1686 NVMe Cache-Less Hardware RAID PCIe 4.0 x8 Adapter

Areca Technology Corporation announced the availability and shipping of the entry level NVMe hardware RAID adapters: ARC-1686 to offer 2/4/6 X M.2 slots.

NVMe performance gains for fast data
Based on the ARM A15 x8 PCIe Gen 4.0 to SAS/SATA/PCIe RAID on Chip (ROC) controller, the ARC-1686 RAID adapter raises the standard to higher performance levels with several enhancements including a 1.6GHz dual core ROC processor, PCIe Gen 4.0 host and 12Gb SAS/SATA/PCIe (NVMe) interface bus interconnection. It provides a fast, reliable, and compact solution for companies that need storage, and is designed and featured in the speed data recording and processing.

This RAID adapter can back up to 2/4/6 NVMe on one PCIe adapter. The ARC-1686 supports both 2280 and 22110 form factor drives and combines them on a tri-mode RAID adapter to maximize I/O performance for database applications and streaming digital media environments. Its hardware RAID relieves the computing burden from the host and maximizes application processing performance.

Guaranteed data protection
In the company’s performance RAID solution, ARC-1686 brings PCIe NVMe to a superior performance hardware RAID at an elevated throughput, high IO/s and a low latency. It supports RAID-0, -1 (Simple/Multi Mirroring), -10, Single Disk (Single/Dual/Triple) and JBOD.

The off module power loss protection (PLP) is optimized for datacenter environments. Its efficient PLP typically applies the capacitors on the NVMe SSD to provide hold-up power until the data is flushed from the NVMe internal DRAM to the NAND flash upon a sudden power off or any failure condition occurrence. It utilizes the on board supercapacitor to provide off module hold-up power, eliminating the need for capacitors on the NVMe SSDs which helps reduce cost. The on-board supercapacitor supporting M.2 slot will show a fault LED status and be identified as a failed drive when it is removed from the system PCIe slot. The ARC-1686 Power Disable feature provides an easy way to power cycle a physical NVMe drive in order to perform a hard reset.

RAID management
The ARC-1686 RAID adapter supports OS which is same as the ARC-1886 series tri-mode RAID adapter. The McBIOS RAID is a BIOS-based utility used to simplify configure and manage RAID adapter via hot key at M/B BIOS boot-up screen. Without having to deploy an agent, you can also configure, deploy, update, and monitor the ARC-1686, via the GUI or through CLI utility. Customers can launch the firmware browser-based McRAID GUI through the ArcHttp proxy server. Additionally, the firm’s ArcSAP storage manager allows the user to scan multiple RAID units in the network and perform GUI management operations across multiple RAID units.

Key features:

PCIe 4.0 host interface, PCIe Gen4 x8 lanes at maximum transfer rate up to 128Gb/s
Support up to 2/4/6 PCIe Gen4 M.2 slots
Tri-mode storage 12Gb SAS/SATA/PCIe (NVMe) ports
Hardware-based RAID solution that supports RAID-0, -1 (Simple/Multi Mirroring), -10, Single Disk (Single/Dual/Triple) and JBOD
Device interface PCIe Gen4 NVMe/6Gb SATA per M.2 port
Support individual NVMe PowerDisable feature
SED support for hardware NVMe encryption capable drives
Adapter off module power loss protection (PLP) saves data issued without data loss at power fail for Non PLP NVMe drive
On-board Supercapacitor to keep on M.2 fault LED status for troubleshooting
Buzzer beeping for any of RAID adapter warning conditions

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