Critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions provider, Vertiv published its research project’s result to identify edge infrastructure models. Vertiv aims to help organizations to move towards a more standardized approach to edge computing deployments. The report, Edge Archetypes 2.0: Deployment-Ready Edge Infrastructure Models, builds on the edge archetypes research and taxonomy, which was introduced by Vertiv in 2018.
A standardized approach to edge computing deployments
The research aims to categorize edge sites based on factors, such as location and external environment, number of racks, power requirements and availability, site tenancy, passive infrastructure, edge infrastructure provider, and number of sites to be deployed. The research was developed with the support of STL Partners, an analyst firm.
The research shows that edge sites will require refinements based on factors that may include environment, use case, legacy equipment, security and maintenance, enterprise data center operations, and communications capabilities. These adjustments are possible within the framework of the edge infrastructure models.
- Device Edge: The compute is at the end-device itself, either built into the device or in a standalone form that is directly attached to the device, such as AR/VR devices or smart traffic lights.
- Micro Edge: A small, standalone solution that can range in size from one or two servers up to four racks. It can be deployed at the enterprise’s own site, or could be deployed at a telco site, with common cases including real-time inventory management and network closets in educational facilities.
- Distributed Edge Data Center: This could be within an on-premise data center (either a pre-existing enterprise data center or network room or a new standalone facility). It also could be a small, distributed data center or colocation facility located on the telco network or at a regional site. Distributed Edge Data Centers are currently common in manufacturing, telecommunications, healthcare, and smart city applications.
- Regional Edge Data Center: A data center facility located outside core data center hubs. As this is typically a facility that is purpose-built to host compute infrastructure, it shares many features of hyper-scale data centers e.g. is conditioned and controlled, has high security, and high reliability. This model is common for retail applications and serves as an intermediary data processing site.
Martin Olsen, global vice president of edge strategy and transformation at Vertiv said,
“As the edge matures and edge sites proliferate and become more sophisticated, creating edge infrastructure models is a necessary step toward standardized equipment and design that can increase efficiency and reduce costs and deployment timelines. Edge sites will continue to require some customization to meet users’ specific needs, but these models streamline many fundamental choices and introduce some much-needed repeatability into edge environments. This research is especially useful for specifiers, such as channel partners, and IT management professionals.”