Create predictive maintenance models to detect equipment breakdown risks, Akraino Edge Stack Use Cases: Tencents End User Story, Increase privacy of sensitive information, Enable operations even when networks are disrupted. And how could they ensure standardization and consistency of architectural components between locations, as well as redundancy and high availability? The benefits of edge computing technology include these core benefits: These additional benefits do not come without additional challenges, such as: As workload locations shift when you incorporate edge computing, and the deployment of applications and analytics capabilities occur in a more distributed fashion, the ability to manage this change in an architecturally consistent way requires the use of orchestration and automation tools in order to scale. In other cases, the virtualized network components need to be redesigned to take full advantage of the 5G network. The continual addition of newer and smaller edge devices will require changes to existing applications so that enterprises can fully leverage the capabilities of 5G and edge computing. The diagram below describes the general process that is executed when performing experimental campaigns. Edge computing all about storing and processing data closer to the users and applications that consume it. Transmitting all the data to the cloud or data center is expensive and slow. As such, the embedded database must be able to operate without any central cloud control point, and it must automatically synchronize with the rest of your data ecosystem when connectivity returns. Hence, the network load is reduced as the transmission only happens when the human is recognized. Third, work will need to be done on how best to break up workloads into sub-components to take advantage of the distributed architecture of edge computing. Similarly to the telecommunication industry, manufacturing also has very strict requirements. This means you need a database that natively distributes its storage and workload across the various tiers of an edge architecture. Get certified and bring your Couchbase knowledge to the database market. The "last-mile" must become increasingly shorter to meet customer demand for better performance and user experience with these applications that are highly sensitive to network latency. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. We're here to help. The initial analysis and compute of the data can be executed within the vehicle. Developing new services that take advantage of emerging technologies like edge computing and 5G will help generate more revenue for many businesses today, but especially for telecommunications and media companies. The local node can provide much faster feedback compared to performing all operations in the central cloud and sending instructions back to the edge data centers. Edge must be by its very nature highly adaptable.
These are some of the key components that form the edge ecosystem: IoT sensors are fixed function equipment that collects and transmits data to an edge/cloud but does not have onboard compute, memory, and storage. Signaling functions like the IMS control plane or Packet Core now rely on cloud architectures in large centralized data centers to increase flexibility and use hardware resources more efficiently. Some of the system functions and elements that need to be taken into consideration include: By automating and connecting these farms, the solution minimizes the isolation that exists in this industry. Operators collect data from sensors all over the platform as part of a daily routine, measuring things like pressure, temperature, wave height, and other factors that affect operating capacity. The use cases in this document are mostly envisioned as a spider web type of architecture with hierarchy automatically able to scale the number of endpoints. If you set aside the geographically distributed nature, this approach faces very similar challenges as operating large-scale data centers. In this brief overview of edge computing technology, weve shown how edge computing is relevant to challenges faced by many industries, but especially the telecommunications industry. This setup allows more flexibility in managing the CU and DU while keeping the bandwidth utilization optimal, fulfilling the increasing user demands.
In this article, Ill walk you through the essential concepts of edge computing and what you need in order to successfully build your own edge architecture.
And if the connection slows or falters for even a bit? Fundamentally, edge computing architectures are built on existing technologies and established paradigms for distributed systems, which means that there are many well understood components available to create the most effective architectures to build and deliver edge use cases. As owners of the network, telecom infrastructure is a key underlying element in edge architectures. Interestingly, while cloud transformation started later in the telecom industry, operators have been pioneers in the evolution of cloud computing out to the edge. Edge computing nodes that consist of smart cameras can do the initial level of analytics, including recognizing entities of interest. This architecture model is much more flexible in case of a network connection loss because all the required services to modify the workloads or perform user management operations are available locally. For instance, a recent study presents a disruptive approach consisting of running standalone OpenStack installations in different geographical locations with collaboration between them on demand. Lets take a closer look at our architecture diagram from earlier: In this version of the edge computing architecture, Ive added red database icons to emphasize where data is stored and processed. Deployment and testing requirements are further highlighted for these new architectural considerations, and therefore existing solutions need to be enhanced, customized and in some cases designed and implemented from scratch. These environments can be very fragile; therefore, it requires high precision to create and sustain healthy and balanced ecosystems. This is expected to improve response times and save bandwidth. Instead of sending data to the cloud, its processed in an edge data center no more waiting on a slow connection for critical analysis. This enables it to provide the extreme high bandwidth required between the radio equipment and the applications or to fulfill demands for low latency. They had to create their own extended infrastructure beyond the cloud, and they had to consider where that infrastructure would live: on premises? That doesnt mean that edge is dead.
Enter edge computing. And if the catastrophic happens and all network layers become unavailable, edge devices with embedded data processing serve as their own micro data centers, running in isolation with 100% availability and real-time responsiveness until connectivity is restored. In addition, the local edge is close to the device edge so latency will be almost zero. As in the previous case, this architecture supports a combination of OpenStack and Kubernetes services that can be distributed in the environment to fulfill all the required functionality for each site. Bruce Jones, StarlingX Architect & Program Manager, Intel Corp. Adrien Lebre, Professor in Computer Science, IMT Atlantique / Inria / LS2N, David Paterson, Sr. As part of testing edge architectures, the deployment tools need to be validated to identify the ones that can be adapted and reused for these scenarios. Benchmarking is often defined as performance testing, but here it applies to a broader scope that includes integration and functional testing as well. There are also new challenges due to the additional burden of running a large number of control functions across a geographically distributed environment that makes managing the orchestration type services more complex. The assigned resources (e.g., compute, storage, network) represent the physical infrastructure that will be used to conduct the evaluation. Written by By Jason Gonzalez, Jason Hunt, Mathews Thomas, Ryan Anderson, Utpal Mangla with LF Edge Premier Member Company IBM. In a 5G architecture targeting the edge cloud, a Cloud RAN (C-RAN) approach, the BBU can be disaggregated into a Central Unit (CU), a Distributed Unit (DU) and a Remote Radio Unit (RRU) where the DU functionality is often virtualized (vDU) with close proximity to the users, combined with hardware offloading solutions to be able to handle traffic more effectively. Lastly, the local edge can now contact the appropriate authorities instead of transmitting the data to the data center which will be slower and since the network from the fire site to the data center might be down. For one example how these types of models can be created, refer to this code pattern, Create predictive maintenance models to detect equipment breakdown risks. Some of these models need to run on the edge, and our next set of tutorials will explain how to do this. The architecture diagram below shows a detailed view of the edge data center with an automated system used to operate a shrimp farm.
And if the cloud data center and edge data center become unavailable, apps with embedded databases continue to run as intended and in real time by processing and syncing data directly on and between devices. This use case is also a great example of where equipment is deployed and running in poor environmental conditions. This section will guide you through some use cases to demonstrate how edge computing applies to different industries and highlight the benefits it delivers. When you move the processing of critical data to the place where it happens, you solve the problems of latency and downtime. Caching systems in edge environments need to take end user device (EUD) proximity, system load and additional metrics as factors in determining which edge data center will deliver the payloads to which endpoints. But (spoiler alert!) For instance, profile attributes may have all been set correctly, but are all the resources reachable, in good health, and can communicate to each other as expected? Further similarity between the different use cases, regardless of the industry they are in, is the increased demand for functions like machine learning and video transcoding on the edge. This section covers two common high-level architecture models that show the two different approaches. In turn, these services allow your organization to start quickly by leveraging on-demand infrastructure and to evolve efficiently by maintaining a standardized, repeatable environment. Containers cannot be deployed on them for this reason. Testing can help with both enhancing architectural considerations as well as identifying shortcomings of different solutions. co-located? In addition, the configuration options are significantly different among the different models. When the internet slows or becomes unavailable, the entire application slows or fails in turn. If I asked five different people what edge computing is, Id most certainly get five different answers. Edge computing is an alternative architecture to cloud computing for applications that require high-speed and high availability. These models and decisions are not specific to the technologies nor do they depend on the particular software solution chosen. It is also important to note that the test suites can be heavily dependent on the use case, so they need to be fine tuned for the architecture model being used. The architecture models discussed here cover the majority of the use cases, however, they still need additional efforts to detail the required functionality to go beyond the basics, outline further preferable solutions and document best practices. Edge architectures require a re-think of the design of the Base Band Unit (BBU) component. The Pareto Principle, or 80-20 rule, applies to video streaming; that is, 80% of customers will only consume 20% of the available content. The above described models are still under development as more needs and requirements are gathered in specific areas, such as: Defining common architectures for edge solutions is a complicated challenge in itself, but it is only the beginning of the journey. This model still allows for the existence of small edge data centers with small footprints where there would be a limited amount of compute services, and the preference would be to devote the majority of the available resources to the workloads. Operations are more efficient and safety risks are significantly reduced. Device edge physical devices might not have the ability to leverage existing security standards or solutions due to their limited capabilities. In recent prototypes, smart caching frameworks use an agent in the central cloud that redirects content requests to the optimum edge data center using algorithms based on metrics such as UE location and load on the given edge site. The advent of 5G has made edge computing even more compelling, enabling significantly improved network capacity, lower latency, higher speeds, and increased efficiency. Typically, building such architectures uses existing software components as building blocks from well-known projects such as OpenStack and Kubernetes. Beth Cohen, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Verizon, Gergely Csatri, Senior Open Source Specialist, Nokia, Shuquan Huang, Technical Director, 99Cloud. The configuration needs to allow applications to continue running even in case of network outages if the use case requires the workload to be highly available, i.e. The purpose of this procedure is to ensure that the deployment step will be completed successfully and result in a test environment that is aligned with the requirements and plans. In a distributed architecture that spans from the cloud to the edge, you must facilitate data processing throughout every layer of your ecosystem. Testing code on lower levels, such as unit tests or checking responses of components through API tests, is straightforward. harnessing the benefits of edge computing pretty much comes down to one thing: data where and how you process it, and how you flow it to and from the edge. Edge computing moves data processing and storage closer to applications and client devices by leveraging tiered, edge data centers along with embedded data storage directly on devices where appropriate. Now more than ever, edge computing has the promise for a very bright future indeed! containerized? While the management and orchestration services are centralized, this architecture is less resilient to failures from network connection loss. a Point of Sales system in a retail deployment or the industrial robots operating in an IoT scenario.
Example functions include: Further testing of the edge infrastructure needs to take the choice of architectural model into consideration: The final two steps are trivial. Compare Couchbase pricing or ask a question. All rights reserved.
The term refers to an architecture rather than a specific technology. Testing the integrated systems to emulate the configuration and circumstances of production environments can be quite challenging. Therefore, having a deployment tool that supports a declarative approach is preferred to specify the characteristics of the infrastructure such as latency, throughput and network packet loss ratio to emulate the targeted real life scenario and circumstances. When all the preparations are done, the next step is benchmarking the entire integrated framework. In this article, we will explain what edge computing is, describe relevant use cases for the telecommunications and media industry while describing the benefits for other industries, and finally present what an end-to-end architecture that incorporates edge computing can look like.
This is because apps that rely solely on the cloud for storing and processing data become dependent on internet connectivity and therefore subject to its inherent unreliability. Factories are using more automation and leveraging cloud technologies for flexibility, reliability and robustness, which also allows for the possibility of introducing new methods such as machine vision and learning to increase production efficiency. These containers include visual analytics applications and network layer to manage the underlying network functionality required for the new service. The highest focus is still on reducing latency and mitigating bandwidth limitations. Edge computing is a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data. Hybrid Cloud: Differences, Benefits & Strategies, Mark Gamble, Dir Product & Solutions Mktg, Couchbase, AWS has rolled out a comprehensive set of services that facilitate edge computing, Performance Accountability & Edge Decision Making with Couchbase, Mark Gamble, Dir Product & Solutions Mktg, Couchbase, Dew Drop October 11, 2021 (#3534) - Online Code Generator, Do More With Couchbase Capella on 6 Nodes Than MongoDB Atlas on 18 Nodes, Introducing the Couchbase Ambassador Program, From N1QL to Javascript and Back Part 1: Introduction, Couchbase vs. MongoDB: NoSQL Misconceptions Part 3, Oracle Date Format: N1QL and Support for Date-Time Functions Pt 1, 11 Fluent Bit Tips & Tricks for Log Forwarding with Couchbase, Converting XML to JSON In C# Using Json.NET, Distributes its data footprint across all layers, Synchronizes data changes instantly across all layers, Between embedded databases on devices and database servers at the edge or in the cloud, Between the embedded databases on devices and things, using private area networks.