#122 - Managing Storage & Edge Computing Infrastructure with Phil White

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the management of edge computing and storage infrastructure with Phil White, CTO at Scale Computing. Edge Computing isn’t new and there are plenty of examples of platforms and systems that have been running compute at the edge for many years. Just think of technologies like ATMs that can run with a degree of autonomy.

What’s different now is the velocity or real-time nature of computing, combined with the volume of data created and processed in edge locations. Phil describes how Scale Computing deploys thousands of edge clusters to customers, building solutions as efficiently as possible.

Data and storage management is a key challenge, as many sites won’t be visited for up to 6 months, depending on issues experienced. This requires effective monitoring tools and the ability to manage minor issues without site visits.

For more details on Scale Computing, check out their website at https://www.scalecomputing.com/. You can follow the company online at https://twitter.com/scalecomputing and Phil in particular at https://twitter.com/realphilwhite

Elapsed Time: 00:32:56

Timeline

00:00:00 – Intros
00:02:30 – What is Edge Computing?
00:04:15 – Edge computing has always existed, surely?
00:06:00 – The velocity (real-time) nature of data processing needs edge
00:09:45 – How does large-scale edge infrastructure get deployed?
00:13:10 – Remote management can be a challenge
00:15:10 – That classic edge computing device – the smartphone
00:17:15 – How is end user data management – it’s application dependent
00:19:00 – With thousands of systems, how are failures managed?
00:22:30 – Good visualisation is necessary to show “fleet” status
00:24:00 – What happens with mobile equipment – like ship systems?
00:26:15 – Could Public Cloud help with the data inertia challenges?
00:31:45 – Wrap Up

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