The FastTrak/SuperTrak line from Promise Technology consists of PCI-based RAID controller cards in a variety of configurations supporting multiple RAID levels and drive interfaces in 2-16 channel configurations. All of the cards include some flavor of the vendor's PAM (Promise Array Manager) monitoring and management utility, which provides both local and remote (via TCP/IP) management capabilities such as creation, deletion, and expansion of arrays; arrays, drives, and controller status monitoring; rebuilding of mirrored arrays; and E-mail notifications. Most cards include the Web-based version of PAM; and some cards additionally support SNMP.

Some of the current offerings in the FastTrak/SuperTrak family include:

- FastTrak TX2000/TX4000: 2 or 4 Ultra ATA/133 drives, RAID 0, 1, 0+1, PCI form factor.

- FastTrak SX4300/8300: 4 or 8 port offerings supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD at 3 Gb/sec per port. Features include a PCI-X form factor, multiple logical drive support, automatic or manual rebuilds of the hot spare drive, and online array expansion and RAID level migration.

- SuperTrak EX8300/EX8350: Extends the SX8300 capabilities with a PC-Express (EX8350) 4x Host Bus Interface for throughput of up to 1 GB/sec, SATA port multiplier support, and support for multiple LUNS. The EX8300 has a PCI-X interface. The SuperTrak series also adds support for RAID 6.

- FastTrak TX2650/4650: 3 Gb/sec SAS/SATA cards with support for 2 or 4 drives on a PCI Express x1 format. RAID 0 and 1 are supported on the two-port card; with the larger card adding RAID 5 and 10. Processing for these cards is software-based, leveraging the vendor's own SAS/SATA ASIC.

- SuperTrak EX4650/EX8650: Offering 4 or 8 port x8 PCI-Express cards supporting connectivity to SAS and SATA (support for both types on the same controller) 3 Gb/sec drives. The EX4650/EX8650 support RAID levels 0, 1, 1E (extended mirroring; allows odd number drive mirroring), 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60 and additionally feature 128 or 256 MB of onboard data cache with a 72-hour battery backup module available. The EX4650/8650 tandem is hardware-based; the cards include Intel's 81348 IO processor.

Also available in the SuperTrak EX line are the SuperTrak EX8654 (4 internal, 4 external ports); SuperTrak EX8658 (8 external ports), and the newest entry in the product line, the EX16650, with 16 internal ports. As above, each of these cards is an x8 PCIe card with support for both SAS and SATA drives at 3 Gb/sec.

Contact Promise Technology for further information.