EMC KTN-STL3 with Areca ARC-1680ix-8

[fhturner]

Hey Everyone—

I've been looking for a more reliable yet not-ridiculously-expensive way to house RAID disks for my own use and for a couple of small business clients. I've tried Sans Digital TR4 and TR8 enclosures, and they are just complete junk. Even spending $300-400 on a TR8 yields you a dinky, sure-to-fail power supply (I've had 3 PSes fail out of 4 enclosures) and backplane boards that will likely die too. And then other SAS enclosures cost twice as much...just to hold some disks!

Anyway, those are the same reasons why most of you are here, no doubt. So research and forum reading led me to the EMC KTN-STL3. I like it for its relatively short-depth footprint (most of my installations do not have a rack), low, airflow-only noise (which is mercifully free of the mechanical howl of so much rack-mounted gear), and of course low cost. Plus with dual, enterprise-grade power supplies, I'm hoping the Sans Digital horrors will be a thing of the past.

I just got the first one in and started testing yesterday, and the excitement quickly started to wane. I'm using a little different setup than most of you probably, but I'm hoping you can still help. Most of my setups have or will have:

• Mac Pro tower running macOS Server
• Areca ARC-1680ix-8 RAID card, which uses Intel IOP348 chip
• 4 to 6 SATA HDs, 2TB to 6TB
• SFF-8088 external cable between enclosure and ARC-1680's single external port

When I plug in the KTN-STL3, I use the double-circle ("primary") port on the lower SAS controller. This is supposed to be the way you access SATA drives w/ this enclosure, since they are "single-channel" rather than dual like SAS drives. While the ARC-1680 shows the enclosure, it shows no "slots" or drives in them like it does for other connections, such as SFF-8087 breakout cabling.

This is not limited to the SATA drives. The enclosure came with 15 x 300GB 15K SAS drives, and none of them show up either. I know there's an issue w/ the 520bytes/sector formatting on the EMC drives, so I wasn't sure if that was why they didn't show up. But it's not just that I cannot format or use them, they just simply don't show up at all (see attached image). Other notes & observations:

• Interposer boards are the ones that should work, according to other posts: 303-115-003D
• SAS drive, caddy status light goes green when plugged in
• SATA drive, caddy status light goes "fainter" green than SAS
• changing RAID HBA between RAID and JBOD mode doesn't seem to matter, still no disks/slots
• ARC-1680ix-8 is an 8-port card w/ 2 internal SFF-8087 and 1 external SFF-8088 ports
• card is 3Gbps SAS PCIe 1.1...EMC is 6Gbps SAS...not playing nice?

I have searched and searched and not found any info about whether the EMC shelves dislike Areca controllers or the IOP348 chip mine use. I find it strange that the enclosure would show up by "name" but show no slots or disks.

Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing a setting or procedure? Do I need to somehow disable an internal SAS 8087 port on the controller to enable the external (don't think so...using SFF-8088 SATA breakout cable on another setup)? Is the EMC just not compatible w/ the Areca card? Is there another dirt-cheap, Mac-compatible SAS RAID card that I should try? Or a different disk shelf w/ similarly small footprint and low noise?

Thanks for any input!
Fred

 

[BeTeP]

Have you tried using port on the bottom controller?

 

[fhturner]

Have you tried using port on the bottom controller?

Thanks for your quick reply! Saw your posts about your KTN-STL3 exploits in another thread... Anyway, yes, although I stated that I’m using the “correct” port (lower, circles), I meant to mention that I’ve also tried all 4 just for completeness. Unfortunately the behavior is the same on each.

 

[BeTeP]

I would suggest using a Linux PC with an LSI 2008/2308 based HBA for trouble-shooting.

 

[fhturner]

I would suggest using a Linux PC with an LSI 2008/2308 based HBA for trouble-shooting.

Okay, I will see what I can do about that. But what if all works as expected w/ that? I am suspecting that the incompatibility is maybe due to the Areca card...

 

[fhturner]

Just to follow up on this for anyone else looking for information, I succeeded in getting these KTN-STL3s working with Areca RAID cards in Mac Pros. As part of my testing/troubleshooting, I purchased an ARC-1880x, which is a 6Gbps PCIe 2.0 card (up from 3Gbps PCIe 1.0 of the ARC-1680ix I was trying). Installing that straight out of the (open) box, enabled my test Mac Pro to see the enclosure WITH the slots/PHY entries underneath.

So I wondered if it had something to do with 6Gbps compatibility. I updated the v1.48 (I think) firmware to the most recent v1.56, and *boom*, no more slot/PHY entries for the enclosure. I was hoping I wouldn't have to attempt firmware reversion, so I looked at the card's settings. In the Areca HTTP manager, I went to System Controls > System Configuration, and changed Enclosure Type Supported from the default of "SES2" to "SMP"...and it worked again!

Then I went to look at an ARC-1680ix installation. It didn't have the exact same setting, but on the same System Configuration page, it showed SES2 Support, which I changed from "Enabled" to "Disabled"...and that worked too!

So, in summary, these ARC-1680 and -1880 cards will work w/ the EMC KTN-STL3, but you need to change to SMP mode and/or disable SES2. Hope this will help someone in the future. Thanks to BeTeP for the replies!

 

[Lost-Benji]

Have you tried using port on the bottom controller?

These are just the stacking ports to connect to the double Circles on the next chassis in string.

 

[MishaZabrodin]

1.I was successfully connecting KTN-STL3 to LSI 9200-8E-HP (Flushed to IT mode v.20), installed in IBM 3650M4 server.
2.Windows 10 pro 64 will recognize the enclosure and the disks.
3.If they are formatted with 520bps, windows cant format them but will show the disks, need sg3 utility to low level format to 512bps , it runs in windows command windows.
4.Port with circles or diamonds are the same if you have one enclosure.
5.After formatting, I was able to make 8.3TB stripe raid array, Crystal DiskMark shows 2162 MB/s read speed.
Hope this help.
Myself still struggling with formatting Micron SSD with 520bps format.Need help.