JMR BlueStor PCIe Extender Used by NASA

JMR Electronics, Inc. announced that JMR’s BlueStor PCIe Extender system recently assisted in the editing process for a highlight reel of the historic Apollo 11 Moon landing, which NASA officials presented to hundreds of reporters during a special 40th Anniversary press conference last month.

The project was completed by Lowry Digital, an industry pioneer in the field of film and video restoration. Ray Mitchell, VP of Engineering at Lowry Digital, explained how the BlueStor PCIe Extender met the company’s storage needs – even as the critical deadline drew near.

"We usually use our own custom-built storage systems, but for the Apollo 11 project, we needed faster storage for our Final Cut workstation," said Mitchell. "The famous moonwalk video isn’t found on one reel alone, it is actually pieced together from several sources. We had four of those sources available to us, and five people working on the highlights we needed to put together for NASA before the press conference. The PCIe Extender provided us with the speed necessary to get the job done," he added.

Currently, Lowry Digital’s BlueStor unit is located in their editing room, and they plan to use it with HD restored video files once the final complete NASA moonwalk reel is finished in September. About one hour of footage was edited using the BlueStor Extender for file storage. The highlights featured the dramatic ‘before and after’ of the video as a means of showing the company’s advanced techniques, known as The Lowry Process.

The BlueStor PCIe Extender is a one-of-a-kind product allowing PCI express bus expansion from a host server. In addition, it provides five PCIe expansion slots in an external 3U rackmount also containing 16 hot-swap SAS/SATA disk drive bays and a SAS Expander. Plugging a PCIe SAS RAID controller into one of the Extender’s slots builds a RAID storage system. Other slots may be used as needed for other peripherals.

Prior to Lowry Digital’s purchase, Mitchell researched other storage technology providers, but found them to be too expensive or not adaptable enough. "It’s a great piece of technology, and for the price, it’s definitely one of the faster solutions available. And in our industry, price is always a primary consideration when updating equipment rooms. I also thought it was beneficial to have a vendor that was located close to us, since service is the second biggest factor," said Mitchell.

Josef Rabinovitz, President and CEO of JMR Electronics, was pleased to have his company’s technology play an important part of bringing a key historical event back to the screen. "Lowry Digital is well-known for its ability to transform film footage with their superior digital imaging processes. We congratulate them on their successful restoration of one of the most famous pieces of film history, and are honored that parts of this major project were helped in part by BlueStor," he said.