Features - Storage Innovations:

PROMISE ADVANCES COST-EFFECTIVE RAID 5 WITH UPGRADED OFFERING

Promise Technology Inc announced the availability of two new RAID 5 PCI adapters, the FastTrak SX4060 for Ultra ATA/133 drives and the FastTrak S150 SX4-M for Serial ATA 1.5G drives. The two adapters are the latest solutions from Promise technology that take advantage of Promise Technology's hardware-assisted RAID 5 technology, while adding memory and incorporating enhanced features.

Used by IT professionals in servers everywhere, RAID 5 improves storage system throughput while maximizing storage capacity and providing data-protection. RAID 5 uses one disk of capacity to provide data protection for an entire multi-disk array. With this efficient data protection scheme, RAID 5 is an ideal fit for budget-conscious storage that uses three or four disks, protecting stored data at a fraction of the cost-per-gigabyte.

"From small business servers to home PCs, everyone needs data protection. By reducing the cost of RAID 5 hardware for low-cost ATA drives, Promise has opened professional-class storage enhancement to an entirely new class of users," said Albert Mu, vice president of network server and storage group for Promise Technology Inc. "Now with the FastTrak SX4060 and the FastTrak S150 SX4-M, even consumers can afford the data protection, capacity and performance benefits of RAID 5."

Promise's FastTrak S150 SX4-M connects PC motherboards to up to four Serial ATA 1.5G drives for an ideal internal storage solution in entry-level servers where price-sensitivity is high. With currently available drive sizes, the controller supports protected, high-performance RAID 5 capacities up to 1.2TB.

For customers looking for a RAID adapter that uses the same proven RAID technology but supports lower cost parallel ATA drives, Promise's FastTrak SX4060 provides four independent Ultra ATA/133 channels that support up to four PATA drives. With currently available drive sizes, the controller supports protected, high-performance RAID 5 capacities up to 1.2TB.

Both controllers reduce the cost of RAID 5 hardware by replacing the expensive IO processor -- often designed for eight disks or more and traditionally used on RAID 5 HBAs for XOR calculations -- with a Promise ASIC that integrates an XOR engine and a cache memory controller. This architecture leverages the high clock speed and processing muscle of the host-system Pentium CPU to deliver a storage system that can outperform many traditional HBAs at a fraction of cost.

Based upon the same architecture as the widely successful FastTrak S150 SX4, the FastTrak SX4060 and the FastTrak S150 SX4-M PCI adapters utilize Promise Technology's unique, hardware-assisted technology to provide users with unprecedented performance-to-price. The new controllers add 64MB of high-quality ECC cache memory included with the adapter for easier installation and guaranteed compatibility. While the original FastTrak S150 SX4 maintained the Promise design philosophy of providing customers with flexibility and freedom of choice in components like cache memory, the quality of cache memory available to FastTrak S150 SX4 customers has varied dramatically. By upgrading the FastTrak SX4060 and the FastTrak S150 SX4-M with 64MB of high-quality ECC cache memory, the company has streamlined the installation and configuration of the premier RAID 5 solution for value-oriented data protection, capacity and performance.

The FastTrak SX4060 and FastTrak S150 SX4-M add advanced features that take advantage of the Promise Technology's RAID hardware and software expertise to maximize performance and reliability. To assure faster transfers, Promise cards use sophisticated data handling techniques to make data transfers more efficient and minimize overloading the host system CPU and slowing system response. Promise FastTrak controllers also include user-friendly FastBuild software to simplify installation and Promise Array Management (PAM) software, a professional-level visual administration tool to monitor and maintain the storage subsystem. The FastTrak SX4060 and FastTrak S150 SX4-M also use Promise's unique PerfectRAID technology for robust error handling and recovery.