A French maker of automation systems and energy sensors is relying on California connectivity to provide the customizable technology for customers to create application-specific micro data centers for Internet of Things deployments at the network edge.
Schneider Electric announced last week that its line of APC-brand micro data centers will use HyperFlex technologyOpens a new window from Cisco Systems.
HyperFlex technology lets users plug the smaller computing-and-storage units into their network architectures. In addition to easing integration headaches, APC’s appliances provide unified policy enforcement and as-a-service software management and monitoring of remote assets, the company said.
The line of micro data centers takes its name from the American Power Conversion Corp., the Rhode Island company that developed continuity and security systems for electronic infrastructures for more than two decades. Schneider Electric of Paris purchased APC in 2006 for $6.1 billion and took it private the following year.
Hyper-converged infrastructures use virtualization to optimize off-the-shelf components and systems that share a common rack. They replicate physical assets on virtual platforms to optimize performance in software-driven data centers.
As applications increase that require low latency – such as those for autonomous vehicles – companies are looking to deploy computing and storage closer to the network edge where the applications run. As telecommunications companies roll out the 5th generation of wireless technology in the United States, the number of connected devices is expected to boomOpens a new window due to 5G’s wide spectrum of transmission frequencies.
Drawing on Cisco’s Unified Computing SystemOpens a new window (UCS) for virtualization, Schneider Electric’s ExoStruxure IT management platform extends that control to the edge. ExoStruxure delivers more than 40 services, including analytics and security, for some 1.6 million connected data center and IoT assets.
Schneider Electric’s partnershipOpens a new window with the Silicon Valley networking giant dates to 2012, when the initial iteration of ExoStruxure was introduced for data center infrastructure management. The platform since has grown to span digital monitoring and control of electric power grids and oil and gas pipelines.
Last year, Cisco certified Schneider Electric’s Netshelter line of enclosures for server racks. They offer a range of power-distribution and soundproofing features as well as guarding the computing, storage and networking hardware they contain against external shocks.
In addition to the APC line, Netshelter enclosures can be used to accommodate Dell EMC VBlock, Cisco-IBM VersaStack and Cisco-NetApp FlexPod systems architectures. Using Schneider Electric’s InfraStruxure architecture, they can be integrated and scaled in multirack deployments.
Schneider Electric sells the micro data centers for IT and office environments, with the latter’s appearance designed to resemble office furniture. Rack heights range from 12u to 42u, and the units provide lifecycle-management functionality and contain batteries to provide a continuous source of power in the event of electric-service disruptions.
The company’s Smartbunker APC is engineered for more adverse operating conditionsOpens a new window , with air cooling to combat the effects of heat and humidity. Schneider Electric says the units are at work in mining, in the military, in the oil and gas industries and on factory floors.
HyperFlex combines the Cisco UCS with software-defined storage and data services to increase efficiency, including through centralized management. It employs technology developed by Springpath, a Silicon Valley distributed-file systems start-up that Cisco acquired in 2017 for $320 million.
Administrators can use HyperFlex to configure data centers for capacity and intense computing workloads. Scaling allows blade servers to be marshalled for additional resources, while the system’s HX platform manages and tiers data across servers in HyperFlex clusters.
HyperFlex supports multiple virtual-machine hypervisors for both cloud-native and traditional applications. It accommodates applications housed in containers and works with bare-metal instruction sets, Cisco says.
Schneider and Cisco tout the development as a victory for channel partners and for end-users in a range of sectors and industry verticals. Schneider also works with Microsoft and Intel, among others, to produce the automation and IoT systems it sells to a global client base.