- Welcome to Azure Essentials.
Today we'll look at your options
for very low-latency networking with Azure Edge Zones,
which brings Azure's global network fabric
into local metro area data centers
provided either by Microsoft,
or with mobile carriers and onto 5G and 4G LTE networks,
bringing compute closer to the edge
so your processing power is local to your users,
or directly to your on-premises edge with a turnkey solution
for running your own private mobile network
with dedicated bandwidth managed by Azure.
Best of all, you don't have to be a mobile networking expert
to take advantage of this.
You can build distributed applications
that span the cloud, on-premises,
and your devices on the edge using the same Azure portal
and DevOps process with Azure resource manager templates
to deploy your VMs, networks, services and applications.
This way you have a consistent deployment
and management experience as you operate core services
in the cloud to the edge.
This convergence of Azure's public cloud, edge computing,
IOT and mobile connectivity with Azure Edge Zones,
has the potential to transform whole industries
by providing the backbone
for very low-latency digital scenarios,
like everyday streaming content experiences
such as remote assistance with mixed reality,
latency critical industrial IoT manufacturing workloads
that rely on fast and intelligent connectivity,
or soon, the acceleration of AI and real-time analytics
in areas like predictive maintenance,
where telemetry data is streamed at source.
For example, as we assess in real time
the reliability of parts on planes,
enable the next generation of self-driving cars,
or even smart cities.
And of course, new categories of experiences
that we've yet to imagine
or that were just not possible before.
So let's now dig deeper into the three main options
available to you, starting with Azure Edge Zones.
This allows you to deploy apps and services
in your IoT device infrastructure
to a Metro Azure Data Center,
close to where your users are.
In fact, Azure Edge Zones have started rolling out
in the U.S. cities of New York,
Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas,
and also in Vancouver, Canada and Perth, Australia,
with more metro locations planned globally
over the coming year.
What this means practically for you is
in the same way you're used
to deploying your apps and services to a region in Azure,
you can now deploy them to available Azure Edge Zones.
Then building upon this concept, we have our next option:
Azure Edge Zones with Carriers.
Here Microsoft's working with the various mobile carriers
to extend their infrastructure
and run Azure services in their local data centers.
And with this option, you can deploy your apps and services
to a carrier-hosted Edge Zone.
The goal of this approach
for your compute-intensive workloads
is to ensure that as your code runs
in Azure Edge Zones with Carriers,
it's only a single hop
from the mobile 5G or 4G network of your users.
Importantly, because your apps and services
can be deployed locally across the carrier's edge network,
they can at all times remain close
to the users and their devices,
greatly reducing app response times
to deliver superior user experiences.
The first Azure Edge Zone with carrier deployments
are being delivered on AT&T'S 5G network
starting with Los Angeles,
with Dallas and Atlanta following soon.
In fact, drone detection, geolocation,
and tracking company Vorpal
are experimenting with this approach
to help track drones in commercial zones,
airports, and other areas with near-instant positioning.
Their drone detection and tracking solution, VigilAir,
uses a geographically distributed network
of sensors that scan relevant frequencies
to identify drone transmissions,
allowing them to identify and track drones
and their operators in near-real time.
Each of Vorpal's sensors is equipped with computing hardware
that processes their location tracking software.
And the more drones there are in the sky,
the more compute power that's needed
to handle all of that data.
Now Vorpal is collaborating with Microsoft and AT&T
to minimize the dependency
on the fixed compute on these sensors
by leveraging the elastic compute
and low latency, high throughput network capabilities
provided by Azure Edge Zones with AT&T.
Now our last option, Azure Private Edge Zones,
is great if you want to connect to manage your IoT devices
or establish dedicated networking and compute scenarios
like smart warehousing and more.
With Azure Private Edge Zones, you can build and deploy
your own private mobile network.
And of course, a prerequisite
to implementing your Azure Private Edge Zone
is choosing your mobile carrier or system integrator
to work with you on planning and deploying services.
Your Azure Private Edge Zone is then implemented
using a combination of Microsoft Azure Stack Edge
for local compute and even GPU support
for things like video inferencing,
software-defined networking, where networking features
such as routers, firewalls and SD-WAN gateways
are deployed and managed as virtual network function
managed apps running on Azure Stack Edge,
as well as mobile carrier hardware and components
such as radio access network devices and SIM cards or eSIMs.
Now for your software-defined networking
hardware and implementation needs,
we've brought together a growing ecosystem of partners
to assist with programmatic SD-WANs and routers,
Virtualized Evolved Packet Cores, such as those
provided by AFIRM Networks and Metaswitch Networks,
recently acquired by Microsoft.
These help your carriers to deliver
cloud-managed network functions,
simplify network operations, deliver automation,
and enable new services rapidly.
Then there are device and radio access network providers
to connect your wireless devices
to your mobile network through your SIM,
system integrators to help with your implementation,
in addition to the mobile network carriers
and telecom partners themselves.
This building block approach helps you
to leverage your existing networking skills
by orchestrating a turnkey end-to-end workflow
for the creation of your private edge network,
allowing you to configure the optimal ingress
and egress of traffic flowing
on your chosen cellular network.
Once you've selected your preferred offer
in the Azure Portal,
as you work with a system integrator or mobile carrier,
they'll help you to plan, design, and build your network.
First, you'll plan the scope and size of your network
based on your specific use case, surveying your site
and determining your radio-frequency needs.
Next you'll design your spectrum selection
or bandwidth with coverage analysis.
Then, the physical layout of your network.
This includes the LAN and WAN design
and the selection of your virtual network functions.
And from here, you'll move into the build phase
by installing physical devices
including your radio access network,
your Azure Stack Edge Computes,
and your LAN and WAN configurations.
Additionally, you can run
a container-based edge compute application
with GPU capability on the Azure Stack Edge,
side-by-side with the private LTE and 5G network.
Once your network's all set up,
centralized management and monitoring
is provided through Azure,
allowing you and your selected partner
to monitor the health of your IOT devices and network.
In fact, specialist robotics firm Attabotics,
who manage a fleet of robots called ANTs
for warehouse automation,
offer a great real-world example
of Azure Private Edge Zones in action.
The reliability of their robotics operations
is determined by the resiliency
of their wireless connectivity,
which formerly ran on normal WiFi.
Now oftentimes when their robots moved
in front of one another, connectivity was lost.
They solved for this by deploying
an Azure Private Edge Zone based LTE network
to increase the resiliency of their connectivity
to operate their fleets of robots at scale.
Each ANT has a sensor, an LTE chip that communicates
with the Radio Access Networks set up in the factory.
Azure Stack Edge provides the local data processing
and analytics, running on Metaswitch Packet Core.
Additionally, silicon-level security
is provided by Azure Sphere,
and they use IoT Central for management
of their robot ANT fleet in Azure.
Okay, so now that you understand your options,
let's take a moment to understand
what role 5G plays in all of this.
As more and more smart devices and experiences
come online and fight for bandwidth,
how we solve for optimizing digital experiences today,
as well for the future, requires a different approach.
If you're new to the fifth-generation wireless technology,
or 5G, it's a collection of evolving technologies
designed to increase mobile network bandwidth
and to speed up data transfer rates
while handling and routing a massive amount of traffic.
Now to give you an idea of the magnitude,
we're talking about potentially a thousand fold more traffic
and up to 1 million devices connected per square kilometer.
What does that mean for speed and performance?
Well in terms of theoretical performance,
5G has the potential to be 20 times faster than 4G LTE
for both upload and download,
which even when you factor in real-world performance
versus theoretical limits, it's still faster
than most wired ethernet connections today.
And at the same time, latency is often reduced
to less than 10 milliseconds.
Now if you deploy a private mobile network
based on Azure Private Edge Zones,
on site and close proximity to your 5G devices,
you'll be able to get further towards
the theoretical performance peaks
and open up new possibilities for fast data transfer.
In fact, at Microsoft, we're partnering with a broad variety
of global telecoms and carrier partners
experimenting with the underlying tech
to deliver differentiated 5G experiences
to our mutual customers.
So that was an overview of Azure Edge Zones
and your options for very low-latency networking.
To try out Azure Edge Zones for yourself,
you can sign up at aka.ms/EdgeZones,
and you can learn more by visiting aka.ms/AboutAEZ
and aka.ms/LowLatencyComputing.
Thanks for watching!