Life on the Edge

Life on the edge may be technically demanding but with XpedITe’s automated provisioning and physical management tailored to meet company-specific requirements and optimising IT assets down to the very last port, securing a competitive edge there can be easy.

Given nothing drives the growth and refinement of an industry more than demand, it is little surprise that the business of facilitating the flow and storage of data is having to evolve at an expeditious rate.

Almost every facet of daily life is increasingly dependent on technology and meeting the world’s insatiable appetite for rapid, resilient and reliable computing requires agile and intelligent solutions.

Consequently, data centres – the proverbial shoulders supporting the explosion in consumption – are having to adapt to service the need and keep pace with the digital revolution.

Doing so has seen a significant shift in thinking towards the “edge”; the concept of bringing computation and data storage closer to the point of demand in a bid to improve response times and save bandwidth.

Although pitched by many marketers as an innovative, novel practice, the idea of extending the edge of a network to deliver cloud computing resources and cached content to local end users is nothing new. Akamai Technologies, for example, built its content distribution network in the late 1990s.

However, there is no denying that the edge – which in reality is more of a deployment strategy than a new technology – is the prevailing direction of travel.

Driven in part by the arrival of 5G and proliferation of the Internet of Things, the global market for edge data centres is expected to nearly triple from $4 billion in 2017 to $13.5 billion in 2024.

These smaller, locally-positioned facilities certainly have the potential to reduce latency and overcome intermittent connections, but great promise comes with high expectations of performance..

Organisations and individuals have grown accustomed to technology on tap and being relatively diminutive in size will not afford edge operations any protection from the big issues faced by traditional, core data centres – namely the need to reduce costs while increasing capacity and maintaining stability and reliability.

Indeed, the challenge of avoiding any downtime – and the associated financial losses – is generally greater for those supporting digital infrastructures out on a limb.

Often situated in outlying locations, edge centres are typically unstaffed and adopt a dark site operating model that makes optimisation and maintenance a major headache without the use of highly-detailed remote monitoring tools and intelligent management systems.

The “dark” tag is particularly apt in respect of the edge’s physical elements, with legacy issues, a bolt-on attitude to expansion and capacity, and inadequate documentation creating a veritable black hole in the operating picture.

Distributed digital infrastructures necessitate the need to gather, interpret and display data to paint an accurate overview and orchestrate environments, but – in contrast to the number of facilities in search of support – such solutions are notable only by their scarcity.

Most within the sector accept preserving uptime is becoming more difficult as networks become more complex and geographically spread and that the array of much-maligned data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) tools available have been left behind by an ever-evolving industry.

And for many, the disconnect – and lack of information integration – between a data centre’s facilities, IT and its business stakeholders’ systems remain a significant barrier to both cost and resource efficiency.

The edge is purported to be the new technological frontier, with its satellite sites viewed as critical features of the digital landscape, and yet it is terrain largely devoid of any meaningful management infrastructure.

To expect optimal operation of the physical components – the cabinets and network connectivity – of these data centres, when there are no engineers watching over them or reliable troubleshooting toolkit acting as a sentinel, is blinkered.

Fortunately, these shortcomings have been recognised by RiT Tech and the automated infrastructure management specialist has flexed its expertise to research and develop a solution to ensure the “edge” is constantly sharp.

XpedITe – a next-generation data centre, network, infrastructure and operations management platform – has been designed to rapidly integrate with legacy systems to create a single source of truth across all sites and assets in any given network.

Defining DCIM, it was created following thorough analysis of the entire ecosystem of a data centre and represents an holistic solution that bridges previous gaps between disparate systems and environments.

The tool provides real-time visibility, monitoring and control of all physical components and, with a focus on improving operational efficiency, delivers a genuine return on investment. It enables points of failure to be immediately detected and, as an all-seeing eye, automates work orders to eliminate manual errors.

Although a remote capability, XpedITe’s impact is felt where it matters most and is a technician’s dream companion in the event of any connectivity crisis. Constantly scanning the entire edge environment, it not only detects operational disruption but troubleshoots and manages the response using advanced automation algorithms.

Consequently, those sent to the edge to perform maintenance tasks go armed with a high-fidelity plan to execute; ensuring tasks are completed efficiently and effectively.

Similarly, XpedITe is a valuable ally when it comes to preserving the integrity of a data centre’s physical network security. An ever-vigilant guard, the solution will raise the alarm if any unplanned connections or disconnections occur or non-recognised cords are patched into a network.

Life on the edge may be technically demanding but with XpedITe’s automated provisioning and physical management tailored to meet company-specific requirements and optimising IT assets down to the very last port, securing a competitive edge there can be easy.