jlong, mates,
heeh it makes me crazy when I'm reading that some of You have problems with data corruption on Areca 1882ix controllers...!!!!! 
((
I have 1882ix-24/1GB+BBU, 6x 2TB Seagate (lowend) sata 7k2 drives in RAID6 and 5x SSD drives in RAID5, some months earlier I had 10x Seagate 11 1TB drives in RAID 5 and 6 and I have Supermicro mb (8XDAH+-F + 2x L5638 and 144GB ram), I never have data corruption (yep I'm lucky as I can see...) but if I have, I will jump from the bridge probably (hope no), it's my lab but I really like it and data on it... not only labs data in true.
hmm, strange bad things you tells here about this data corruptions on Areca 1882ix (and maybe others) controllers, I have PSODs from the begining of using Areca Controller (yep I hate it, but never lost a VMFS DS, only 2-3 vms max), I used it only with ESX5 from the beggining, earlier I have HP P800 on ESX 3,3.5,4,4.1 and everything was ok, besides of disk drops from RAID grup sometimes) but never any PSOD...
on Areca PSODs are so "natural" for me, I had in one year about 7-8 PSODs, support generally cant help because..heeh.. because they have to replicate my enviroment to test it, but they don't replicate it and don't give me any working solutions (from about 1 year now, I talk and write with them many times but no sollution at all ) - why I didn't give back the controller? i don't know, maybe I have a lot of data on it and don't have anought time to migrate in on the other raid's when I create it from the same disks, ehh I don't have anought disks to easy and fast migrate it to other RAID/Controller, that's a problem.
I like web management of Areca, I like theoretical possibility of using 4GB cache with BBU... nice option but these PSODs and problem with sharing data streams/multitasking (on vmware with areca, it's probably driver problem, eventually firmware and driver)... I hate, It's not a cheep controller, its controller for (in my country, PL in EU) 1600usd... and making things like something cheep for a 100 bucks...:((
I probably last time try to solve my problems with them, I send them a long email with a lot of datas and examples of failures... if they don't solve PSODs and miltitasking/multistreaming problem I probably (if it's possible) give it back and go into LSI - stable and fast controllers (I should go into them from a start but I'm not happy of 512MB cache).
here is my email to Areca Support (20120807), some of attachements attached to post too:
I'm experiencing such problems with my Areca ARC-1882ix-24 1GB cache from more than 1 year:
1. it crashes of VMware ESXi v5 (PSOD) during high IOPS on the 2 different RAID Sets (1 is on SSD disks in RAID5 and second is on SATA 7k2 disks in RAID6), when high IOPS is on the one RAID Set the problem never happend (about 1 year of tests), when on 2 separated RAID Sets on the same or differend kind of disks it crashes almost in 95% of high IOPS operations on the 2 RAID Sets, during crash the Areca HTTP interface working ok and in event log there are nothing happens, this problem is probably connected to problem 2.
last PSOD ware 2012-08-07 17:44:31 (05:44:31 PM) - attachements Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120807_17_44_31_IMG_0666.JPG - Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120807_17_44_31_IMG_0669.JPG
PSOD 2012-07-24 17:29:34 (little differ than others, it was some DB IOPS operations on this virtual machine: SEPM-tst669 and additionally it was copied/moved simultanously on another RAID Set - so copying between RAID Sets was done during crash, as we can see on screen Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120724_17_29_34_IMG_0660.JPG small IOPS it sugest it was moved/copied from RAID6 to RAID5 on SSD drives) - attachements Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120724_17_29_34_IMG_0599.JPG - Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120724_17_29_34_IMG_0661.JPG
PSOD 20111219 22:48:07 - attachement: Areca_VMware_PSOD_20111219_22_48_07_IMG_0369.JPG
PSOD 20120131 12:43:31 - attachement: Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120131_12_43_31_IMG_0404.JPG
PSOD 20120522 08:10:30 - attachement: Areca_VMware_PSOD_20120522_08_10_30_IMG_0602.JPG
2. during even middle size IOPS (aka 200-300 IOPS) on one RAID Group second RAID group (even it's not loaded) it's having very high responces and runing extremaly slow, for example if I make load about 300 IOPS on my RAID6 Set (6x 7k2 SATA) and try to use 4x SSD (RAID5) RAID Set it's almost unaccessible, running extremaly slow, like 50-70 IOPS... when the same RAID Set have 6.000-10.000 IOPS when second RAID group is not loaded more than some IOPS...:P - this problem is probably connected to crashes from problem 1.
3. I observe VERY low write performance especially on SSD Raid Set, when it easy make 8.000-12.000 IOPS on read it make only about 500 IOPS on write (aka 70MB/s)... but when the same RAID Set is degragated... it makes easy 3x more IOPS like 1500-2000 IOPS (aka 190MB/s), this problem may be connected somehow to problems 1. and 2.
4. I cant add 7'th sata drive when server/and controller is powered off because after powering on Areca BIOS cant be initialized, its showing seconds up to 300 and halt, when there are only 6 of 2TB Seagate SATA drives Array looks like working ok (besides of problems 1,2,3 but the same problems occured on 10x 1TB 7k2 SATA Seagate drives, the 7'th 2TB Seagate 7k2 SATA disk can be easly added during server/and controller is powered on bt after restart it halt in the same way , of course Itest another disks, and also switch between disks that working on RAID Set (RAID6 after rebuild) and the result is the same with any other disk added...
attachement Areca_Halt_after_300sec_when_7th_Seagate_2TB_7k2_SATA_drive_pluged_in_to_controller(when_poweredoff)_IMG_0654.JPG - after enumeration to 300sec it halt with something like Areca BIOS can't be initializated.
5. problem similar to problem 3. but in the same RAID Set, when RAID Set is loaded with one IOPS kind, it's really hard to agree other types of IOPS (one tasks looks like works quite ok but when I add second or thrid task it runs much much slower than same (or even smaller) config on HP P400 controller (P800 and P410 too), so it's some kind of problem with VMware driver or/and Areca Firmware (for compatybility with Vmware)
attachement Areca_Copying_Speed_Differences_(3xRAID6_Vols_on_1x RAID_Set_of_9x_SATA_hdd)_20111224.jpg - shows differences in copying speed on one stream and on 4 streams - it's same kind of IOPS but we see very big IOPS/MB/s degragation (1-2 are on 4 streams and 3-4 are on 1 stream)
Exactly same problems occured some months ago when I have 2 RAID groups on 1TB SATA 7k2 Seagate drives (RAID6 + RAID5 Raid Sets), there was no crashes problem when there only 1 RAID Set (rest problems ware the same).
Host HW/SW Enviroment:
VMware ESXi v5.0.0 b623860
Supermicro X8DAH - fully supported by VMware ESXi v5 Supermicro Mainboard
2x Xeon L5638 (2x 6 cores +HT)
144GB of RAM
Areca ARC-1882ix-24
Areca RAID Sets - 1x RAID6 (6x 2TB 7k2 Seagate SATA II), 1x RAID5 (4x 256GB SSD)
Areca SN: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
VMware supported intel 82571EB Quad 1000 MT NIC card
ESXi v5 boot from local SSD on mainboard SATA controller
system was fully stable 1 year before on HP P400, HP P410 and HP P800 controllers (no PSODS on almost 1 year)
Areca HW/SW/Config specs (in attachements - Areca_arc-1882ix-24_HW&SW_info_20120807_01.jpg - Areca_arc-1882ix-24_HW&SW_info_20120807_08.jpg)
I need support for this problems, my suspection of problems 1,2,3 are bad Areca VMware driver and/or Areca firmware, for problem 4 it's probably problem with Areca firmware.
regards
NTShad0w
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_20111224.jpg){kind=link}