1. RailTel, a Central Government PSU, said on Wednesday it will create 'edge data centres' at Railway premises across 102 locations, especially Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns in the country.
2. The 'edge data centres' will be set up by RailTel jointly with partners.
3. The prospective Business Associates/partners should be a company registered in India. This activity will entail an investment opportunity of around Rs 500 crore, RailTel said in a statement
4. The process to establish the edge data centres has been set in motion with the floating of Expression of Interest (EOI) inviting the industry to partner in this exercise, it said.
5. Edge data centres are small data centres located at the edge of the network, where they are closer to end-users and devices. Having such kind of facility at the edge would enable faster performance and lower latency as organisations will not have to move the data to far-flung data centres to process it.
6. RailTel is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India Optical Fiber Cable (OFC) network of over 60,000 RKM along Railway track. The OFC network covers important towns and cities of the country and several rural areas.
7. This new initiative of RailTel will give a boost to the Indian Government's mission of Digital India.
8. Under the proposed plan, the initial capacity of the envisioned edge data centre at each location can be of around 20 Racks (5 KW to 10 KW each). However, edge data centres with variable rack and power density can be explored as per the requirement and availability of space, power and other factors at individual locations, RailTel said.
9. Edge data centres will enable RailTel to deploy IT infrastructure for 'caching' of popular contents to improve the experience of RailWire broadband customers as cached contents will then be served locally instead of travelling a long stretch of Network.
10. Similarly, IT infrastructure for 'peering' with content players can also be deployed in these edge data centres which would improve cost economics for delivery of contents, RailTel said.
11. "With the help of such localised Data Centres, rural areas can be served with low latency applications related to digital skills, financial inclusions, digital literacy etc," Puneet Chawla, Chairman and Managing Director of RailTel said in a statement.
12. "The edge date centres will provide better experience and aid in the adoption of digital services by the population of these areas and thus contributing to the digital economy. The move will be another important step towards the path of digital transformation. It will also provide an opportunity to local professionally skilled manpower to participate in this transformation," Chawla added
EDGE DATA CENTER
1. An edge data center is a small data center that is located close to the edge of a network. It provides the same device found in traditional data centers but is contained in a smaller footprint, closer to end users and devices. Edge data centers can deliver cached content and cloud computing resources to these devices. The concept works off edge computing, which is a distributed IT architecture where client data is processed as close to the originating source as possible. Because the smaller data centers are positioned close to the end users, they are used to deliver fast services with minimal latency.
2. In an edge computing architecture, time-sensitive data may be processed at the point of origin by an intermediary server that is located in close geographical proximity to the client. The point is to provide the quickest content delivery to an end device that may need it, with as little latency as possible. Data that is less time-sensitive can be sent to a larger data center for historical analysis, big data analytics and long-term storage. Edge data centers work off of the same concept, except instead of just having one intermediary server in close geographical proximity to the client, it's a small data center -- that can be as small as a box. Even though it is not a new concept, edge data center is still a relatively new term.
3. The major benefit of an edge data center is the quick delivery of services with minimal latency, thanks to the use of edge caching. Latency may be a big issue for organizations that have to work with the internet of things (IoT), big data, cloud and streaming services. Edge data centers can be used to provide high performance with low levels of latency to end users, making for a better user experience.
4. Typically, edge data centers will connect to a larger, central data center or multiple other edge data centers. Data is processed as close to the end user as possible, while less integral or time-centric data can be sent to a central data center for processing. This allows an organization to reduce latency.
5. Some edge data centers may also use micro data centers (MDCs). An MDC is a relatively small, modular system that serves smaller businesses or provides additional resources for an enterprise. An MDC is likely to contain less than 10 servers and less than 100 virtual machines within a single 19-inch box. MDCs will feature built-in security and cooling systems, along with flood and fire protection. MDCs are often used for edge computing.
6. An organization may choose to use an edge data center by deploying MDCs for scalability. For example, a cell/radio site may use micro modular data centers. MDCs and edge data centers shouldn't be conflated, however. MDCs should be thought of more as a component that helps create an edge data center.
HOW EDGE DATA CENTERS WORK
1. At a basic level, edge data centers will work as a connection between two networks. The edge data center will be located closer to whatever machine is making a request, inside an internet exchange point. The internet exchange point is a physical location where multiple network carriers and service providers will connect. This will allow a quick flow of traffic between networks. The edge data center itself might be made of an MDC -- which will contain the devices a traditional data center has, just in a smaller footprint. By being able to move processing requests like JavaScript files or HTML closer to the requesting machine, the amount of time needed to deliver that data back will decrease.
2. Even though an edge data center can provide multiple services on its own, it will typically connect back to a larger data center. This data center can provide more cloud resources and centralized data processing. That larger data center can also be used to connect to multiple edge data centers. Each edge data center will store and cache data specific to the edge devices they're located close to.
3. Some edge data centers may also be able to be managed remotely, as with telecommunications companies with cell-tower edge data centers, for example.
TYPES OF EDGE DATA CENTERS
1. There are two main types of edge data centers. The first is a small facility that is used to serve secondary locations by a service or colocation provider, and the second is defined as a modularized site placed close to the edge of an organization's own main network. With many organizations, operating across multiple geographies, each location might require access to core company data and systems. Edge data centers based around modularized systems are useful here. A large data center can also be built from a number of smaller modules.
2. Edge computing locations can be divided by network-based sites or establishment-based sites. Network-based sites are generally tier-based in architecture, made specifically to support edge data centers. This approach is favored for its high availability and uptime. For example, network-based sites are used in instances such as with radio sites, where the goal is to have the site be one hop away from mobile and non-mobile users, which should achieve low latency.
3. Establishment-based edge data centers can use tiered architectures, but for off-premises configurations. These are typically driven by private networks. They can orchestrate transport needs between access and aggregation sites, as well as collect data for processing -- separate from core data processing and storage.
Source:
https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/railtel-to-create-edge-data-centres-at-102-locations-across-india/articleshow/88852588.cms
https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/edge-data-center
