Digital recorders

Pentek has released the first in a new family of COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) turnkey high-speed digital recorders, the Talon™ RTS 2715. Available with either magnetic or solid-state disk drive arrays, the RTS 2715 can continuously record up to two 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) data streams to a RAID array without data loss.

According to Rodger Hosking, vice president of Pentek, “Many of our customers have sensors and computer systems communicating massive amounts of digital data over a network and they need a way to capture that information for archiving or post-mission analysis. Our new Talon line of digital recorders addresses that need. The first in the family, the RTS 2715, handles 10GbE with a variety of data protocols and physical interface types in a commercial-grade configuration. Ruggedized versions and other configurations are on the horizon.”

The RTS 2715 can capture one or two simultaneous 10GbE data streams, guaranteeing zero data loss with an aggregate recording rate up to 2 Gbytes/sec. It accepts either TCP or UDP data packet protocols and stores data to files on a RAID disk array. The RTS 2715 can also play data back from its drives, streaming it over the 10GbE channels using either protocol. An optional GPS module provides time and position stamping during data capture.

Multiple Interface and Recording Options
The RAID drives are hot-swappable, allowing virtually unlimited data capture capacities. Because the files are stored in a NTFS (new technology file system) format, users can read the files on a standard Windows-based computer system, eliminating the need for file format conversion. Two Gigabit Ethernet ports, four USB ports and a built-in optical disk drive provide alternatives for off-loading data.

Drives are available in several different configurations, supporting RAID levels of 0, 1, 5, 10, or 50 with up to 20 Terabytes (TB) of data storage. Single-channel recorders are available in 5 TB, 10 TB, and 20 TB versions using up to 24, 3.5” hard disk drives (HDD). A 2 TB version uses up to eight solid-state drives (SSD). Dual-channel recorders include 10 TB and 20 TB HDD and 3 TB SSD versions. Both 4U and 5U rack mount chassis configurations are offered.

Customers can specify any of three popular physical interface options for the 10GbE connections. The CX4 interface supports Twinax copper cabling for run lengths up to15m. Optical interfaces operating at 850nm using LC connectors are available for either multi-mode fibre cables up to 300m long or single-mode fibre cables for run lengths up to 10km.

Built-in Workstation
The RTS 2715 is built on a server-class Windows 7 Professional workstation with a 1.8 GHz Intel^® Core™ i7 processor and 2 GB of SDRAM. This workstation comes pre-loaded with Pentek’s SystemFlow Recording Software, which provides a simple and intuitive GUI (graphical user interface) for system configuration and control that shares the look and feel of other Pentek Talon recording systems. Users can store custom configurations as profiles for single-click setup, and use the Gigabit Ethernet interface for remote control of the recorder. The C-callable API (application programming interface) that comes with SystemFlow also allows users to integrate the recorder as a high-performance server front end to a larger system.