Rorke Data announces Galaxy AuroraLS high-performance, low-cost storage solutions for next-generation post facilities

Rorke Data has made available its new Galaxy AuroraLS (LiteSpeed) direct-attached RAID and SAN appliance. Designed with four 8Gb Fibre Channel host connections, the Galaxy AuroraLS features sustained transfer rates of more than 1000MB/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.

EOS, Aurora’s 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 multicore software RAID algorithm that is fast and highly adaptable. Unlike hardware RAID ASICs, EOS can be quickly reprogrammed to take advantage of next-generation CPUs and more efficient network protocols as they become available in the market.

Rorke Data’s AuroraLS RAID device integrates with Blackmagic Design products. The EOS RAID engine enables high performance levels, as well as seamlessly integrates into customers’ SAN environments.

The 12-bay Galaxy AuroraLS features one, two or four ports of 8Gb Fibre Channel connectivity, can be configured as a direct-attached storage or SAN appliance and offers 10-15TB 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 AuroraLS 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.