Vortex PC Rack-mountable Industrial PC-based data recorders

Vortex PC is an Open data recording platform optimized for high performance data buffering and flexible data flows between I/O devices in a 2U or 4U rackmounted industrial PC. Vortex PC is a Windows based PC with components which have been selected and tested to integrate to maximize the reliability and performance of the Vortex open data recording system. Included in the Vortex PC system is one of VMETRO’s PCI boards which act as a storage interface.

The main board of this PC has dual Intel Xeon processors optimized Intel NetBurst micro-architecture and Hyper-Threading Technology with 1 Gigabytes system memory. There are two Ethernet interfaces supporting 10/100/1000 Mbits/s. The 2U version has two PCI busses providing five PCI slots. The 4U version has four PCI busses providing twelve PCI slots. Each PCI slots has characteristics which should be observed when considering which slot to insert additional PCI boards.

Some 4U models offer internal JBOD storage with up to six disks. Typically these disks will be configured as a Single Loop. External storage devices can also be used by implementing a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network; the external JBOD is typically configured as a separate loop but other configurations are possible.