Will modularization become the mainstream of edge data centers in the 5G era?

The world is moving from the 4G era to the 5G era.

With the rapid development of the new generation of mobile network communication technology, 5G applications and breakthroughs in various industries, such as finance, tourism, manufacturing, and medical care, have been reported frequently. Taking 5G telemedicine as an example, these application scenarios not only require very low and stable network latency, but also require massive, heterogeneous, and diverse data access. Therefore, the traditional centralized computing and processing mode will face difficult bottlenecks and pressures, and edge computing will take advantage of the trend and become a new solution for these application scenarios.

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Like the implementation of cloud computing, edge computing ultimately requires support at the infrastructure level to be truly promoted and applied through data centers. In the future, the promotion of edge computing will require building a business platform at the edge of the network close to users, providing storage, computing, network and other resources, and sinking some key business applications to the edge of the access network to reduce bandwidth and latency losses caused by network transmission and multi-level forwarding.

Different from the existing centralized cloud data center, this edge data center is located between the user end and the cloud data center, providing a small, distributed, and user-friendly data center environment.

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Based on the technical characteristics and application requirements of edge computing, edge data centers have the following advantages:

• Ultra-low latency. Massive amounts of data no longer need to be uploaded to the cloud for processing, which greatly reduces network latency, makes feedback faster, improves user experience, and reduces congestion that may occur in other parts of the network.
• High bandwidth. Since edge data centers are close to information sources, they can perform simple data processing locally without uploading all data to the cloud. This reduces the transmission pressure on the core network, reduces network congestion, and greatly increases network transmission rates.
• High real-time computing capability. The edge data center is the first entry point for data, which can accept massive, heterogeneous, and diverse data access, be responsible for simple business processing, and have the ability to analyze and process massive access data in real time.
• High security and reliability. After receiving the data, the edge data center can encrypt the data before transmitting it, which improves the security of the data. The processing and transmission reliability of the edge data center is crucial to real-time business and has a direct and obvious impact on the user experience.

On the one hand, edge data centers are of great benefit to the implementation of 5G application scenarios. On the other hand, at the deployment level, the influencing factors of edge data centers are no less than those of traditional cloud data centers.

Edge data centers are close to users and are the first entry point for data. They have a wide range of deployment environments and methods, such as in residential areas, rooftops, warehouses, wireless base stations, or other complex and harsh environments. Enterprises and other institutions have a large number of edge data centers, which cannot operate independently. They need to be managed uniformly, dynamically scheduled, and deployed quickly. Edge data centers are small in scale and in harsh environments, but they involve real-time services and a large amount of user privacy data, so the risk of business interruption is high and the security level is high. Based on the above factors, some industries that have deployed edge data centers have tried to use modular data centers as their edge data center construction model.

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Some IT managers in the financial industry believe that modular data centers have obvious advantages in construction and deployment:

• The equipment is provided by the same manufacturer and is highly compatible. The integration of the four major subsystems enables overall delivery, simple construction, small footprint, and reduced rental costs.
• The use of prefabricated modules greatly reduces the workload of on-site engineering. The construction time is short, and it can be easily replicated and quickly deployed in large quantities.
• It elastically supports IT changes, can be flexibly configured, and has strong scenario adaptability.
• Intelligent operation and maintenance, centralized management, unified monitoring, and real-time reporting of operation status can greatly save labor costs, save maintenance manpower, and improve safety and troubleshooting efficiency.

Thanks to the rise of 5G and edge computing, new edge data centers will become a trend in the future and can solve many industry problems. Modular data centers will undoubtedly become one of the trends of future edge data centers due to their advantages such as convenience, efficiency, low cost and high reliability.