What is Galaxy?
Galaxy is the Registered Trade Mark of Bell Microproducts for RAID, NAS and Storage server products integrated in the Rorke Data Integration Center in Minneapolis Minnesota.  Galaxy quality manufacturing is completed in this ISO 9001-2001 and ISO 13485-2003 certified facility.  Galaxy products are value based performance driven solutions with superior service and support.  Galaxy is the Practical Storage alternative for growing mid range storage market.

How long has the brand been in the marketplace?
The Galaxy Brand of Storage was first announced in April of 1999 at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas.  Since then Galaxy has been installed in thousands of location around the world.

How does Galaxy compare with IT enterprise storage companies?
Galaxy delivers a high performance solution with service and support at a fraction of the price of high end storage companies.  The difference is Galaxy is the Practical storage alternative for customers looking for value priced storage.

With this great price, performance and support, does the Galaxy have the same features of the competitors?
Galaxy has made its mark with its great feature set and proves over and over that the competitors have to work hard to beat them.  See the competitors comparison guide.     

Why Rorke Data? What are the benefits for using Galaxy RAIDs?
Since 1985, Rorke Data has been a leading provider of high performance networked storage that protects and ensures continuous access to business information. Our Galaxy RAID systems are renowned for its sound protection and for the wide variety of choices with Fibre Channel, SAS, SATA, and iSCSI interfaces. Oriented for performance or availability, our innovative design and service is embodied in the extensive use across industries such as medical data mining, imaging, security/CCTV, and digital media processing including video-on-demand, stream editing, and more.  Features like Multi-pathing, snapshot, and management-enhancing software implementations give SMB companies enterprise capabilities. Hot swappable redundant components keep the product working while repairs are being made. Our architectural design, consultation,  presales check list, and tech support all are free yet are the most valued features by our customers.

Can you explain how working with Rorke’s Galaxy will help my bottom line?

• The Galaxy has a variety of products that meet the industry’s requirements…

Rorke provides a “one stop shop “ for VAR’s needs.  The Galaxy’s various computer host and drive configurations give you the product you need for the application and price you need to hit.  Whether it is Direct, SAN, ISCSI or Network attached storage, for Enterprise, Server, or workstations, with SCSI, Fibre channel, SAS, ISCSI host connections, the Galaxy product line meets your customer’s requirements.  Various RAID levels of 0,1,3,5,6, 0+1, 30, 50, 60, or JBOD are all supported and give you a flexible single platform for numerous capabilities.  The Galaxy offers the speed to meet streaming applications, the redundancy to meet data security, or the interconnectivity to be placed in SAN environments.   

• We make sure the Galaxy is right for your usage…

Using our Pre Sales Check List our technical and logistic experts work with you to find the correct Galaxy model and configuration that meets your expectations.  We have extensive time and training invested in all the various industries where you will use the Galaxy and can advise you about the best way to solve your application problems.

• We lower your costs by eliminating your integration and testing …

Using our testing and integration facilities, we do the integration, testing, and configuring of your Galaxy to our strict predetermined specifications.  In the process we find the bad drives, cables and RAID components thus reducing the time and costs that you would incur to do the same thing at your facility.  Rigid ISO 9001 and 13485 based integration procedures, overnight testing, and diagnostic routines are performed on each Galaxy RAID before shipping. You can depend on the fact that the Galaxy is in a plug and play format, ready to connect to the computer systems you have specified

• We lower your costs and time when you need assistance…

And if you do need assistance, there’s only one phone number to call for the whole subsystem.  Plus you are calling a mature, application aware, support engineering force with a call center that has a database of problem solving and tracking information that narrows down the problem quickly.   Over 300 man years of technical experience in the storage industry gives Rorke and our customers the confidence that we can meet any technical challenge. We have

Is Galaxy an FDA resisted product?
Yes, Galaxy has been registered with the US Food and Drug Administration under # 3004413161.

You talk about superior service and support with Galaxy, what affect does it have on me ?

• Reduce your exposure to product incompatibility and plug-ability with our :
• Pre-sales design in services in the Galaxy Interoperability Lab.
• Applications/cross product compatibility testing.
• Pre-Sales Checklist and Configuration information
• Protect your investment and pricing with:
• Galaxy registration program
• Giving comfort to you and your customer at installation with:
• Professional installation by mature, application and system knowledgeable engineers
• Easy to manage and respond to technical difficulties with:
• First call 7 x 24 x 365 technical support.
• On-site service agreements for all levels of support.
• Upfront replacement services.
• Extended warranty support.
• Parts support.
• Our technical and sales representatives help you sell addon and end to end products into the existing sites with a broad range of industry accepted and recommended complementary storage and software products.

 

Does the Galaxy HDX2 RAID have easy to swap parts?
The drives, controller, power supply and fan assemblies are all hot swappable and easy for any user to replace.  

Where can I get more information on Galaxy products?
Go to http://www.rorke.com/galaxyhdx2.cfm.
Or just go to http://www.rorke.com/ and click on “Galaxy”.

What is Galaxy Lead Registration?
This is the process that resellers can register an opportunity with Bell Microproducts or Rorke Data to ensure that the opportunity is registered to the reseller that has brought the opportunity to the Galaxy product line.  All opportunities for Galaxy should be registered.  Contact your Galaxy sales representative for registration details on how to register a Galaxy opportunity.

How do I get a quote for Galaxy product?
Contact your Galaxy sales representative at Bell Microproducts, Rorke Data or your local Galaxy reseller.

What is RAID? What is JBOD? How do they work together?
A RAID system provides the following benefits:

Fault Tolerance:

All hardware can fail. A failed component can be replaced. However, a disk drive failure destroys the data within. RAID technologies provide fault tolerance for disk drives by combining multiple disk drives into one or more logical arrays. If a single drive fails, data can still be retrieved from other members of a RAID array. A RAID1/3/5 array can sustain a single drive failure (more with RAID1 if the failed drives still have a mirror); a RAID6 array can withstand simultaneous failures of two members. 

Performance Gain:

RAID also provides combined performance by simultaneous disk access. For example, the performance of a RAID0 array approximates the mechanical speed of individual drive times the number of drives within an array.

The performance of the arrays composed in other RAID levels will be slightly reduced because of the efforts on extra reads and writes and the parity computation.
An advanced RAID system is also capable of algorithms that facilitate performance handling I/Os of various characteristics.

RAID system:

Rorke only provides external RAID systems. An external RAID system is an enclosure powered by a single or redundant RAID controllers, and consists of power supplies, ventilation system, and other enclosure devices that provide the ease of maintenance. The RAID controllers distribute the I/O requests to individual disk drives and provide fault tolerance by managing the logical array configurations and generating parity blocks through XOR computation. 

JBOD:

A JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) is a drive enclosure that accommodates multiple disk drives. These drives are interfaced through a common backplane and are accessed through JBOD controllers that provide either the Fibre Channel bypass or SAS expander functionality. The JBOD enclosures attach to a managing RAID system, thus providing an easy means to quickly expand array capacity to many folds.
Galaxy JBODs will not attach to 3rd-party RAID cards or HBAs.

What are the current storage connection options – DAS, SAN, and IP SAN?

• DAS stands for Direct-Attached Storage. A DAS RAID system is one that is directly attached to an application server because of the benefits of dedicated performance or the simplicity in cabling. A DAS configuration often results from the limitation on cabling distance; e.g. 12 meters for a SCSI bus.
• On the contrary, a SAN (Storage Area Network) configuration can expand to virtually limitless number of devices where multiple servers or workstations can access a RAID system. A SAN network relies on fiber optical cabling and on Fibre Channel switches that provide connectivity to the Galaxy RAIDs as well as each server or workstation with any-to-any connections, bypass for fault isolation, and intelligent functionality such as zoning.
• IP SAN refers to iSCSI implementations where data is encrypted and sent within a SCSI command over an IP network between an iSCSI initiator and iSCSI target where the Galaxy is connected through the IP but still acts like a direct connected local drive. IP SAN enables data transfer in an existing IP-based infrastructure and hence saves the costs on expensive Fibre Channel cabling and networking devices.

What is Multi-pathing? (Path Failover/Failback/load balancing)
Put in its simplest form, Multi-pathing means connecting a RAID to a server using two data cables. Path redundancy allows continuous access to data in the event of single cable or HBA failure. The problem is, a RAID array may appear as two separate devices to the server OS. Therefore, a Multi-pathing software, embedded in the Galaxy firmware, becomes necessary by managing the access and telling host OS that these are alternate paths to a single device. In the event of cable disconnection or failure, the software can help direct I/Os through the existing connection.
Since I/Os can be distributed across multiple data paths, an intelligent Multi-pathing software is also capable of load-balancing policies such as round-robin, least weight, etc., and thereby making the optimal use of path bandwidth.

Do you have a Web based GUI for managing the Galaxy RAID?
RAIDWatch, embedded in each Galaxy RAID, is the Java-based GUI interface that simplifies array management with utilities and sub-modules that cover the full range of array management, monitoring, and protection features. For example, the main management GUI provides access to all configurable firmware options. The Central Management offers a quick access to multiple arrays. And the Configuration Client comes with notification methods that keep a system administrator constantly aware of the statuses of his RAID arrays.

Can I use the Galaxy HDX2 RAID products for streaming applications?
 Yes, Rorke Data has been in the Audio / Video / and Imagery streaming application markets since 1990 and has been successfully configuring the Galaxy RAID to meet the most sophisticated and demanding streaming applications.  Combined drive, firmware, and RAID settings allow Rorke engineers to ‘tune’ the Galaxy HDX2 to match your streaming application.  Mention your specific application when talking to your Rorke Sales Representative.
 
Is there storage expansion options with the Galaxy RAID products?
The latest families of the Galaxy RAID now have multiple SAS JBOD [Just a Bunch Of Disk] expansion chassis which allow up to 88TB of storage managed by the Galaxy RAID.  Both single and dual redundant Fibre and SAS host connectivity is available with either SAS or SATA drives being used in the expansion chassis.   Contact Rorke Sales for your specific configuration requirements.

Why does Rorke recommend RAID 6 on the Galaxy Series of products?
With the popularity, lower price, and performance increases we see with SATA based RAIDs, the realization is that SATA drives will have more data related errors and therefore a possible RAID failure.  Parity drive protection with RAID level 5 is sufficient to protect the RAID.  However, when RAID systems grow larger and applications become more complex, the RAID5 protection can be insufficient. In the event of single drive failure, the occurrence of bad blocks on yet another member drive can render the affected data stripes unusable.   RAID6 improves RAID5 and provides a significantly higher level of fault tolerance in terms of its ability to withstand two (2) of its member drives to fail at the same time.  True, 2 drives are being used for parity and are not used for data, but the insurance that this second drive provides out ways the cost of this unused drive and potential loss of all data.  Consult with the Rorke Sales and technical support for more details.  

Are there any other preventative methods in place on the Galaxy to protect my data?
Combined use of embedded RAID firmware, chassis engineering, and drive diagnostic capabilities are being used in the Galaxy to monitor, expose, and prevent various problems from impacting your data on the Galaxy RAID. 

A few examples are shown below:

1. Disk Clone: Individual data drives can be cloned for physically relocating disk drives or for safe-keeping purposes when an administrator discovers symptoms of disk drive defects.
2. Smart bypass: In special applications such as video streaming, bad media on drives can cause observable delays. The smart bypass quickly determines after a few mini-seconds that drive retries may ensue, and turns to other member drives for data. Instead of waiting for timeout, I/Os are quickly satisfied.
3. Smart cache: With intelligent algorithms set for the application purposes, read-aheads can be performed, temporarily put in cache, and quickly returned to the host far faster than the actual I/O hits.  

Does Galaxy have a Roadmap and are improvements in the works?
Rorke is always looking at improvements to increase speed, size, reliability, industry acceptance while lowering costs.  Our current Roadmap shows the latest 500GB SAS and 1.5TB SATA drives are slated for this year while just releasing a 12 bay 1RU SAS RAID based on the 2.5 SAS drives.  Other firmware changes that include snapshot and volume copies are enhancements that will bring users enterprise functions without the high costs of the big 3 Enterprise RAID manufacturers.