The ARC-1222 from Areca will grow and change with your storage needs. This high-performance PCIe-to-SAS RAID host adapter provides up to 8 SAS/SATA II peripheral devices. This card features the Intel IOP348 I/O processor, the fastest I/O processor in Intel’s product line, offering unlimited storage design flexibility from scalability, cost and performance perspectives.
This card supports RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6, 30, 50, 60, Single Disk or JBOD and has a maximum of 256MB of ECC DDR2 onboard cache. You work hard for your money; put it to good use with this highly economical, yet very effective controller.
Serial Attached SCSI InterfaceWith two internal mini-SAS port, the Areca ARC-1222 supports both SAS and SATA devices for enhanced flexibility and speed.
RAID SupportThe Areca ARC-1222 supports multi-level RAID configuration including RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60 and JBOD for better performance, enhanced data security and flexible capacity upgrades.
256MB On-board MemoryThe Areca ARC-1222 features 256MB on-board DDR2 533 SDRAM with ECC protection for maximum data integrity.
On-board I/O ProcessorThe Areca ARC-1222 features an integrated 800MHz Intel IOP348 processor for fast hardware RAID parity calculations.
PCI Express x8 InterfaceThe Areca ARC-1222 features the PCI Express x8 interface which provides sufficient throughput and full-duplex operation for enhanced performance.
Pros: When I opened the ARC-1222, I was surprised to see an RJ-45 port on the back, which wasn't readily made apparent in the product specs. You can connect it to ethernet for manageability - it has a web-based configuration UI, SNMP and email support. I've seen RAID problems make the host unusable on plenty of other systems, so being able to diagnose storage issues independently is a great feature! The SFF-8087 connectors are great for cable management. If you have an enclosure that supports SGPIO, I think it's worth it to get an ARC-1222 instead of the ARC-1220, even if you're only going to use SATA, just for that feature. Works great in RAID-6 mode. Supports scanning for failures and parity mismatches and fixing them automatically in the background, just like you'd hope a good RAID controller would. Supports arrays larger than 2TB just fine (I'm using it with a 9TB array).
Cons: Cache RAM is not expandable. Optional cache battery backup module (not included) requires the use of an extra slot in back of case (though it need not plug into motherboard). Doesn't seem to light up enclosure's failure light via SGPIO when a drive is declared failed (though I haven't really tried to tackle this one yet). Telnet support via eithernet uses a bizarre terminal emulation that doesn't seem to be VT-100 compatible - which matters because it seems to be a menu-driven (UNIX curses-like) system.
Overall Review: I want to give it five stars, but a few imperfections, like the weird terminal emulation in telnet and the lack of an index in the enclosed printed manual hold me back.