Focus on quality, IoT devices promote edge computing

Focus on quality, IoT devices promote edge computing

With increasing expectations for high-quality content, the growth of Iot will help end users stay closer to edge computing nodes.

When online shoppers look for ideal homemade gift baskets or summer themed meal cushions, they may choose to visit Etsy, an online retailer that uses edge computing to improve their service performance and elasticity.

Companies like Etsy are moving to the edge to improve user experience, says Sophia Vargas, an analyst at Forrester Research at Mass. Cambridge.

Many enterprise applications are background office applications, and latency is not critical to these applications, but is sensitive to latency for customer-oriented applications, she said.

"On the other hand, if I consider my clients and set all my infrastructure in Ohio, it is not the best choice for my family in London ." Said Vargas.

Edge computing is an idea that small data centers are as close to end users as possible to improve access speed and performance.

Moving to the edge has nothing to do with open data centers in rural areas, such as Bristol, SD (Population: 341), Moscow, and Maine (Population: 512). More is moving to Level 2 cities.

"The City of the NFL may be very satisfied with their numerous network operators," said John Scanlon, CEO of the 365 data center, when talking about super-large American cities. 365 data is a company that operates edge data centers in two cities.

IoT applications will stimulate more demand for edge data centers, but they are still focused on 20 cities in the future. Scanlon predicts that the concept of edge will cover 100 to 150 cities with abundant cache data within ten years.

"The frequency and quality are the reason you want to move to the edge," Scanlon said.

Services for local residents from Miami and Atlanta are more cost-effective than Ashburn services for Va. For example, once data is migrated to Miami, there is no additional cost after the migration, which is a capital cost for enterprises rather than an operational cost.

Etsy integrates global data center Structures

For Etsy customers, online retailers can help craftsmen sell their handicrafts or wines directly and serve all buyers from key data centers, it is very convenient for customers living near the Etsy data center. "However, it will become less and less important to  in the future," said Jason Wong, senior engineering director of Etsy infrastructure.

The obstacle that affects Etsy customers to get a better experience is the rising cost of Etsy's deployment of new data centers.

"We don't want to implement and replicate high-cost data centers around the world," he said. Instead, companies are seeking to place small server clusters globally, or use "pods" to solve this problem.

Wong believes: "This will bring faster data packet transmission and page loading speeds. In addition, the storage of specific data blocks in Pods can effectively reduce the communication dependency on our primary data center ."

This can also effectively improve the flexibility of Etsy, he added.

Three steps are required to move to the edge. The first step is to establish the density of data centers in the "NFL City". In Matt Miszewski's words, it is "close to those with data centers ". Digital Realty Trust Inc is a San Francisco-based provider of host hosting and data center services. Matt Miszewski is the company's senior vice president. He once served as the CIO of Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle, he also held a senior position in Microsoft.

The second step is to move to the second-level city, and the third step is the "Last Frontier". Through a highly distributed network device, the network deployment can be connected to the data center anywhere, achieve "ubiquitous computing ".

Now, the steps to transfer to edge computing have been completed to step 1.8, Miszewski said.

Moving to the edge will involve splitting the network and data center transformation. Miszewski also hopes that the fragmented data center industry will be strengthened in Level 2 cities.

"It would be interesting to see who will prepare funds for stage 3," he said.

Miszewski said that to make full use of edge computing advantages, it also requires better collaboration between data center operators and network providers, and a better management hierarchy of level 2 city Iot. For example, 1000 Iot devices need to work together as a unit before reporting the results back to the data center. Currently, mainstream companies and investors have departments focusing on research and development.

Miszewski believes that IOT will require a large amount of capital costs and reach the edge in the market in a different way.

There are two main options: one is to build Shell programs that can be flexibly deployed for different user needs, and the other "more radical" option is to cover the entire platform in a very small data center.

Sent to the edge micro-data center

The biggest challenge for Etsy to move to edge computing is choosing the location where pods is stored and the data center where pods is located. The site selection is in the company's interest, Wong said.

Then, Etsy will purchase the server and deploy software for the pod. Before each pod starts running, Etsy will contact its primary data center to complete the configuration.

The demand for power in edge computing also led Schneider Electric (Schneider Electric) to release a brand new single-shell micro-data center product, which itself integrates power supply, cooling systems and management software.

Data centers can be built by Schneider partners without customers, or on-site configuration by customers. Once running, the SmartBunker FX product line has its own cooling system, while the SmartBunker CX and SC product lines depend on external cooling systems. SX is designed for the IT data center. CX is suitable for the office environment, while FX is applicable to any environment. SmartShelter is a reinforcement system that supports multiple racks.

The price of the new micro-data center ranges from half frame to 10 racks by size, from $2.5 to $5 per watt.

Smartbunker FX, SX, and CX power ranges from 3kw to 8kw, and SmartShelter can reach 100kw. This also means that the price of the SmartBunker product line ranges from $7,500 to $40,000, and the price of the Smartshelter product line is as high as $500,000.

Steve Carlini, senior director of Global Solutions at Schneider data center, said: "customers do not need to hire people familiar with website IT equipment ".