Galaxy Aurora LS From Rorke Data

Rorke Data Inc., a data storage solutions provider and wholly-owned subsidiary of Bell Microproducts, announced the availability of its new Galaxy Aurora LS (LiteSpeed) direct-attached RAID and SAN appliance. Designed with four 8Gbit Fibre Channel host connections, the Galaxy Aurora LS is the highest performing RAID in its class with sustained transfer rates of over 1000 MB/s and rebuild times up to 6X faster than hardware-based RAID solutions. It supports multiple uncompressed HD streams or 2K film, making it ideal for the film or video post production industries.

With an MSRP starting at less than 70 cents per gigabyte, the Galaxy Aurora LS fills a gap in the market by giving smaller post production workgroups access to high performance storage that had previously been cost prohibitive.

According to Robert Herzan, Rorke Data’s vice president of sales, "Rorke Data has a long and successful history in the media market. Our expertise has led to thousands of installations and our storage solutions are used by the most prominent names in the industry. We are excited that the Galaxy Aurora LS is now the highest-performing product at this price point in the market today. We designed it around our customers’ needs and made it universally supportive of any operating systems and audio/video applications."

EOS, Aurora’s patent pending software RAID engine, further distinguishes the Galaxy Aurora family from the competition’s traditional RAID offerings by eliminating the biggest bandwidth bottleneck — the ASIC based hardware RAID controller. The EOS RAID engine is powered by a Nehalem-based CPU driving a multi-core software RAID algorithm that is extremely fast, and is highly adaptable. Unlike hardware RAID ASICs, EOS can be quickly reprogrammed to take advantage of next-generation faster CPUs and more efficient network protocols as they become available in the market.

"Post production professionals at every level are going to appreciate that they can use their Blackmagic Design products with Rorke Data’s new Aurora LS RAID storage device," said Dan May, president, Blackmagic Design, Inc. "The EOS style RAID engine enables cutting-edge high performance levels, as well as seamlessly integrates into our customers’ SAN environments. We are very pleased to support the new Aurora LS, another excellent tool to facilitate our customers’ creativity and production."

The 12-Bay Galaxy Aurora LS features 1, 2 or 4 ports of 8Gbit Fibre Channel connectivity, can be configured as a Direct Attached or SAN appliance and offers 10-15 TB of usable storage capacity with RAID 6 protection. An embedded, Web-based GUI allows users to easily monitor status and troubleshoot. Able to support multiple workstations in a SAN without expensive switches, the Galaxy Aurora LS is compatible with SAN software including; XSAN, CommandSoft, StorNext, and MetaSAN and is application tested with AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox, Bluefish, Final Cut Pro, AVID, Adobe, DaVinci, Autodesk, IRIDAS, Assimilate, and Digital Vision with more to follow.

The Galaxy Aurora LS, as well as all Rorke Data products, are supported by Rorke Data’s Professional Services Division and come complete with pre-and-post sales support, onsite installation, 24×7 onsite, and custom services.