Areca ARC-1284ML-24 PCI Express x8 6Gbit/s RAID controller

24-port PCIe 2.0 to SATA lll RAID Adapter ARC-1264il-12/16 and ARC-1284Ml-24 RAID controllers are a cost-effective RAID storage solution that combines low-cost SATA III and port multiplier chips with low latency for internal storage systems. It is aimed at high-availability and capacity oriented applications more than 8 HDDs, such as security systems, surveillance, multimedia content generation, large-volume data capturing, mail servers and entry-level database systems. Its performance is limited by the port multiplier chip numbers on the controller. Applications will get the best performance when you attach the max number HDDs on the RAID controller or rearrange the HDD position to use max port multiplier chip. Each SFF-8087 connector uses one port multiplier chip. ARC-1264il-12/16 and ARC-1284Ml-24 internal PCIe 2.0 host RAID controllers are based on the same RAID kernel of field-proven internal/external RAID controller and same device driver architecture with widely used 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID controller. They can support directly attached 12/16/24 internal 6Gb/s SATA ports via 3/4/6 SFF-8087 connectors.

The ML version comes with Min SAS 4i internal connector. This Min SAS 4i (SFF-8087) connector has eight signal pins to support four SATA drives and six pins for the SGPIO (Serial General Purpose Input/Output) side-band signals. The SGPIO bus is for efficient LED management and for sensing drive locate status, without any discrete fault & activity cable needed.