NonStop and Edge Computing

It seems like ages ago when I delivered on a personal quest to deliver NonStop o/s onto HPE EdgeLine that fit a full dual powered fault-tolerant NonStop in a 2U rack slice. Think of that. Several terabytes of storage with traditional RAID-1 fault tolerance, power separated processors and memory, fault tolerant CLIMs.  All inside of a 2U slice.

Why would anyone want this? It turns out that I wasn’t just doing it because it was cool or impressive. (Yes, it is both of those.)

One of the primary reasons I did this was I had been working with the pre-split HP labs people on some proofs of concept that would leverage an always-on service at the “edge.”  Some of you may recall shortly after that we went to NonStop Technical Bootcamp with a very fun demonstration of NonStop being used for Internet of things (IoT). Remember the little “things,” “Thing One” and “Thing Two,” etc.? The Internet of Things was a near term technological shift in how people would use computers. Little computer things would communicate to each other and to other more centralized systems.

To a degree, this has happened and continues to evolve with all sorts of issues of compatibility, security, etc.  There are sources* that say that this is continuing to grow at a rate of about 20% YoY (not accounting for the AI hype interceding real compute investment).  So, why did I look at EdgeLine? Why “The Edge”.

The edge is the touchpoint for access to enterprise functionality. These Edge compute cases might be as frivolous as an internet toaster, or as critical as a wireless 911 connection. The first real computer that can associate to enterprise workload is at the edge. Critical needs are: availability, scalability, and security. These IoT Edge services are often placed into the network side of the enterprise where the requirements are for high speed. This was the thought behind the projects and demonstrations.

NonStop IoT Demo ca: 2016

The IoT technologies and the EdgeLine platform have continued to evolve. The NonStop operating system could fit even more into a smaller physical footprint today. Any potential user could do the same sort of deployment that I demonstrated back in 2016-17. The difference now is that the Edge has gone beyond just IoT. The Edge represents a place for network level customized use cases. Much of this is in the telco space, but also extends into the enterprise. It’s not just network, but it’s also not only back office. It’s the perfect place for clustered scalable workloads with strict availability, security, and performance requirements.

In financial services, this could be leveraged for payment gateway routing or trade routing.  For telco, edge systems are already used for 911 and alerting and going forward will be used for value added services like smart cities, robotic automaton, telemetry, etc.  Industry 4.0 or “4^th Industrial Revolution” is a current concept that seems to be taking hold. It assumes an edge compute will handle significant workload in the 4^th IR. And the work done on EdgeLine and NonStop should be able to play a part in that next gen industrial age.

Looking back 10 years is often an uncomfortable thing. You tend experience a lot of technological stylistic “ouch” (see blockchain, NFTs, etc.). Trends change. Technology hype fades. Interestingly, Edge use cases have pretty much continued to follow the predicted growth of 20%+ CAGR. The compute engines might change and may not always be that slick 2U EdgeLine chassis. But the values that NonStop bring to Edge are still relevant to this compute space.

It’s not often that I look back over 10-15 years and see that the generic compute use case has attained a steady growth as predicted.  The main growth is in the telco uses. But 4^th IR is likely to change the way manufacturing and distribution works. It isn’t and won’t all be public cloud. There are too many risks associated with leveraging cloud for nearby computer services that need to reside close to robots, AI, and “things”.   This is the focus on the 4^th IR.

If your company has a use case at the Edge consider that NonStop can play in this space and can add the same availability and security to enterprise edge services as it does to back-office application.

*GII

*market.us