Promise and PMC-Sierra Partner

PROMISE Technology, Inc. announced commercial availability of its SuperTrak 6G SAS RAID controller cards with enterprise-level features for use in the entry, SMB and OEM markets. The SuperTrak 6G is available in production quantities through a global network of PROMISE’s select partners.

The 6G SAS RAID controllers feature PMC-Sierra Inc.‘s PM8011 SRC 8x6G 6Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (RoC), have up to 512 MB of DDRII memory and are capable of delivering over 2GB of bandwidth with a single controller in HBA mode over the PCI Express 2.0 bus. The controller is an intelligent and robust solution offering RAID 6 data protection features along with advanced error handling that meet today’s enterprise-level data storage requirements. In addition, the controller offers onboard cache memory with a battery backup option for 72-hour data retention.

"The SuperTrak 6G SAS RAID controller family can be deployed in a variety of applications and IT environments, enabling OEMs to exploit the performance, management, and scalability advantages of 6Gb/s SAS," said Zaki Hassan, director of product marketing for PMC-Sierra’s Enterprise Storage Division. "By choosing PMC-Sierra’s SRC RoC for its SuperTrak RAID controller family, PROMISE is able to leverage the industry’s leading 6Gb/s SAS RoC and exceed customer expectations for ease of use, reliability, robustness and performance."

The high performance architecture supports flexible connectivity to both SAS and SATA hard drives delivering enterprise-class availability, performance and reliability for Windows and Linux environments. The solution supports up to four levels of JBOD cascading in each port for a total of up to eight JBOD connection and 256 devices. Up to four 24-bay J-Class units can be connected to a single SAS HBA for a total of 96 drives. The solution is also forward-upgrade compatible between the SuperTrak to the PROMISE VTrak.

"We are seeing strong demand from end-user customers for high performance and improved efficiency, and our work with PMC-Sierra delivers on that demand," said Chi Chen Wu, CTO, PROMISE Technology. "Our 6G SAS solution is a key component in meeting the needs for expanded capacity as data centers look to support virtualized applications."

The SuperTrak series includes WebPAM Pro, PROMISE’s Web 2.0 browser-based GUI which provides such outstanding features as remote RAID management over a TCP/IP network, on-demand and scheduled media patrol and online RAID controller firmware upgrades.

SuperTrak 6Gb/s SAS Controllers are designed to provide high performance and high throughput while delivering cutting-edge features and unparalleled reliability. Built from the ground-up using PMC-Sierra’s state-of-the-art PM8011 I/O processor coupled with 512MB of DDR2 cache memory, PROMISE’s world class enterprise proven RAID engine and an 8x PCIe Express 2.0 interface, SuperTrak 6Gb/s SAS Controllers are the most versatile and reliable SAS Controllers in the storage industry today.

The SuperTrak 6Gb SAS Controllers feature list is the most comprehensive in the business supporting Hardware Accelerated RAID levels such as RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 50, RAID 60 in addition to Automatic Array Rebuild, Array Expansion, Array Migration, Bad Sector Remapping, Dedicated Hot Spares, Hot Plug, Hot Swap, Online Firmware Updates (update from OS), SPGIO for backplane management and SES II for management of external devices such as the PROMISE J-Class JBOD Subsystem. The Media Patrol feature allows predictive scanning of hard drives to determine if and when the hard drive may become unusable, copying all data to a designated spare disk before the drive actually fails, saving time and eliminating potential data loss.

Customer benefits include:

• High Performance RAID Controller – Designed to provide high performance and high throughput while delivering cutting edge features and unparalleled reliability.
• Feature Rich Web Management Tool – Allows easy and extensive management of PROMISE SuperTrak for easy access and configuration.
• Flexible and Scalable High Performance Storage for any Environment – Easily integrates into a number of performance demanding environments powering File Servers, Exchange Servers, Transactional Databases and Web Servers.

Availability and Support
The PROMISE 6G SAS RAID controller cards are now commercially available worldwide through select PROMISE distributors.