Roving Edge Infrastructure FAQ
Get answers to frequently asked questions about Roving Edge Infrastructure.
General
What is Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure?
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure is a service designed to host workloads and use cases that operate at the edge, especially the far edge and tactical edge. It is designed to function as an extension of your Oracle Cloud tenancy. It consists of a cloud service and physical edge devices that can be used individually or multiple nodes networked together to enable you to run IaaS cloud services and workloads outside the cloud data center where data is generated and consumed. The core infrastructure services for Roving Edge Infrastructure include compute VMs, object storage, block storage, and virtual networking.
What does Roving Edge Infrastructure do?
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure enables your latency- and connectivity-sensitive applications to process data generated in edge locations, lowering communications infrastructure load, reducing data transmission costs, and improving overall application responsiveness. Roving Edge Infrastructure is an extension of your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) tenancy.
You select compute image and object storage resources, or “workloads,” in your tenancy to load onto the Roving Edge Infrastructure devices; power up, configure some networking parameters, and prepare to access the web console on the Roving Edge device; and then the selected workloads are available at the edge to access even when disconnected from the internet. Data can be synced from the edge to the cloud or the cloud to the edge.
What Roving Edge Infrastructure devices are available?
A Roving Edge Infrastructure device is the physical component that enables you to configure and operate workloads at the edge.
Roving Edge Infrastructure device options consist of the following:
- Roving Edge Device (RED): A dense, portable compute- and storage-optimized server that has been ruggedized to operate in remote and austere environments. At less than 35 lb., these 2U devices are single-person portable and can be set up and taken down in remote locations within or outside of traditional data centers.
- Roving Edge Ultra (Ultra): Roving Edge Ultra (Ultra): An edge device optimized for ultra-portability and an even wider range of operational environments. At less than 5 lb., including a battery, the small form factor device is backpack portable with the ability to operate on hot-swappable DC batteries or AC power. With a wider operational temperature range, enhanced ruggedization, and smaller form factor than RED, Ultra is well suited for use in tactical environments. Ultra has less storage, memory, and compute capabilities than a RED.
- Roving Edge Station: Roving Edge Station is a secure expeditionary data center, enabling applications in the field whether connected or disconnected. It is a 25-foot containerized solution that holds 2x 42U racks (requires separate Distributed Cloud infrastructure), cooling, power management, UPS, fire suppression, and embedded security monitoring.
What is the Roving Edge Device in more detail?
Roving Edge Device (RED) is the key component of Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure.
- Each RED is optionally encased in a military-grade, ruggedized case that provides electromagnetic protection to limit emanations and interference.
- Each RED comes in a 2U form factor and weighs 33.6 lb.
- When ruggedized, a protective case is added, making the total weight 84 lb., with handles on both sides, which allow it to be carried by two people.
- Each RED contains 2x Intel Xeon CPUs Gold 6230T at 2.1 GHz.
- 40 total cores (32 usable).
- Memory: 512 GB (390 GB usable).
- Storage: 61 TB NVMe raw.
- Network interface: 2x 10 GbE (1 active).
What is the Roving Edge Ultra in more detail?
- Each Roving Edge Ultra comes equipped with an Intel Xeon CPU D-1559 6230T at 1.50 GHz.
- 12 total cores (8 usable).
- Memory: 96 GB DDR4 (64 GB usable).
- Storage: 7.68 TB raw.
- Network interface: 2x 1 GbE (1 active).
- Ultra is 7.4” x 6.3” x 2” and weighs only 3.75 lb. without the batteries.
- Roving Edge Ultra comes with a modular, stackable form-factor that’s integrated 75 Wh battery, which directly attaches to the chassis and can be stacked two deep for up to two hours of operating time. It is compatible with Mil Std BB-2590/U L-Ion 294 Wh batteries, which can be used in tandem with the chassis-integrated batteries to further extend battery operation. An available adapter for vehicle-sourced DC power can keep the attached modular batteries continuously topped off.
- Ultra has an operating range of -20°C to +50°C (-4°F to 122°F), has active passive cooling, and has been tested to MIL-STD 810G for humidity, operating altitude, and shock and vibration criteria.
What is Roving Edge Station in detail?
- A compact 25-foot expeditionary data center sized to be transportable via military aircraft, ship, or truck.
- Equipped with 2x 42U racks.
- An integrated solution with power management, UPS, cooling, and a fire suppression system.
- Includes extensive security, including a card or biometric system, alarms, cameras, and EMI filters for classified operations.
- Includes networking gear for local runtime, mount points for Starlink satellite dishes, and an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) FastConnect VPN option to link to an OCI region.
- Capable of housing Roving Edge Infrastructure nodes (RED and Ultra), Oracle Compute Cloud@Customer, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer, Oracle Private Cloud Appliance, ZFS storage products, and Sun x86 hardware. The station is also capable of supporting other customer equipment needed for applications or missions.
Who is eligible to use Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure?
To be eligible for Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure, you must have a Universal Credits agreement with an Annual Commitment or Funded Allocation agreement. Your account must be in good standing and have at least 120 days remaining on the contract, and you (or someone authorized in your institution) must have agreed to the Terms and Conditions as part of your ordering document. Customers using Roving Edge Station must commit to a minimum term of 24 months; the order may include an option to renew for another 12 months, for a maximum term of 36 months.
Note: Government customers cannot use their existing gov SKUs to order Roving Edge.
How do I request and initially configure Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure devices?
Users with policies that allow access to edge resources will be able to request and configure Ultra or RED nodes via a workflow in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console. First create a node using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console or the Oracle Cloud CLI. Using the console, you can select custom compute images (VMs) and object storage buckets of data from your tenancy to have them loaded onto your Roving Edge Infrastructure. You may build custom VMs with applications by using existing licenses for applications such as Oracle Database or Oracle Analytics. The Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure service verifies your selected configuration to ensure it can fit onto the node.
When you submit the request for approval
- Oracle validates your eligibility to receive the Roving Edge Infrastructure resources.
- The device(s) are provisioned with your workloads.
- When ready, the device(s) are either shipped to the address you specified when creating the request or, if U.S. Government, are made available for pickup from the Oracle data center by a courier service of your choice.
Request tracking is available; you can track the status of your request using either the Console or CLI.
When you receive your node, you power up, configure some networking parameters, and prepare to access the web console on the Roving Edge device; then the selected workloads are available at the edge to access even when disconnected from the internet.
With Roving Edge Infrastructure, you can also synchronize object storage data between your device nodes and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tenancy bidirectionally (upload/download) when a network connection is available. See Data synchronization.
Who should use Roving Edge Infrastructure?
Consider using Roving Edge Infrastructure when cloud capabilities are required in remote locations that are completely disconnected or have intermittent or latent WAN connections.
Roving Edge Infrastructure can act as a semipermanent, long-lived cloud installation in remote locations and can perform cloud processing locally without network dependencies when deployed with sufficient storage and compute capacity. Remote locations include command centers, control centers, and satellite field locations.
You can use Roving Edge Infrastructure to locally process large amounts of streaming data due to low-latency requirements and inherently latent WAN connections. You can deploy cloud compute capabilities at the edge to process the data locally, virtually eliminating latency.
With Roving Edge Infrastructure, data and applications can be developed, maintained, deployed, and tested in your OCI tenancy and then deployed to your remote Roving Edge devices as needed.
Which Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions does Roving Edge Infrastructure support?
Roving Edge Infrastructure service is supported in US-Ashburn-1 (IAD), US-Gov-Phoenix-1 (TUS), US-Luke-1 (LUK), EU-Frankfurt-1 (FRA), and UK-London-1 (LHR), with plans to expand into other regions.
What countries can Roving Edge Infrastructure be shipped to?
Roving Edge Infrastructure can be shipped to Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Roving Edge Infrastructure will still need to be ordered and synchronized from a supported region. Countries outside the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom may need to follow special provisioning processes and/or be subject to shipping and custom fees (if required). Please contact your Oracle account team for further information.
How much does it cost to use Roving Edge Infrastructure?
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure is offered under two pricing models. [Note, it is not offered under the Free Tier or for Pay As You Go customers.]
Roving Edge Ultra and Roving Edge Device configurations are priced per day of possession of a device, with a minimum lease term of 30 days of possession. These resources are available if you have an Annual Commitment or Funded Allocation agreement. While in your possession, you have unlimited use of the on-box services and resources. Please see the pricing page for details.
- Roving Edge Ultra: single, standalone device, priced at US$45 per device per day.
- Roving Edge Device (RED): single, standalone device, priced at US$160 per device per day.
How long can I keep the Roving Edge Infrastructure device(s)?
You may keep the Roving Edge Infrastructure devices for as long as you have an eligible account and sufficient Funded Allocation or Universal Credits to pay for the lease of the device(s). The minimum possession is 30 days unless it is ordered as a Station configuration, which has a minimum possession of 24 months, extendable to 36 months.
How long will it take for Oracle to provision my workloads onto my Roving Edge Infrastructure devices for delivery to my institution?
Provisioning times depend on availability of edge devices and the amount of data and number of objects that need to be provisioned onto the device.
Note: There may be an extended lead time for Roving Edge Infrastructure devices.
What APIs are available for managing my workloads and data on the Roving Edge Infrastructure device?
Roving Edge devices support a rich set of compute, storage, IAM, and VCN APIs to support creating and managing workloads and data. Please refer to the Roving Edge Infrastructure API and CLI documentation for more details.
What are the software requirements for using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure command-line interface?
Please refer to the command-line interface requirements.
What images can I use on my Roving Edge Infrastructure devices?
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure–compatible images from your cloud tenancy can be loaded onto your devices. Both Linux (Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, and CentOS) and Windows images are supported. Solaris images are not supported. The images must be paravirtualized (cpu, i/o, network) and built for UEFI64.
How do I import my custom images from my Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tenancy to a Roving Edge Infrastructure device?
After you create a Roving Edge Infrastructure device “node” via the OCI console, custom images can be imported when workloads are attached to the device(s). Object bucket data is imported to your device via workload attachment as well.
What data storage is available for me to use on my Roving Edge Infrastructure device?
Each device includes object storage and block storage. Object storage is recommended for unstructured data. Block storage is recommended for high-performance, transactional applications such as Oracle Enterprise Edition, Oracle GoldenGate, and Oracle Analytics Server. Each Ultra has 7.68 TB of raw storage. Each RED has more than 61 TB of raw NVMe capacity.
What are data boundaries, and what boundaries can I define when selecting object storage buckets to provision on Roving Edge Infrastructure device(s)?
Boundaries allow you to limit the set of objects you wish to select from the cloud bucket to provision onto RED(s). The following parameters are available to limit the data included:
prefix—The string to use for matching against the start of object names in a list query.
start—Object names returned by a list query must be greater or equal to this parameter.
end—Object names returned by a list query must be strictly less than this parameter.
These parameters are same as the Object API ListObjects parameters.
Data synchronization
What is data synchronization?
Data synchronization is the bidirectional (upload/download), optional synchronization of your data to and from your tenancy when connectivity is available to your home region. From the Roving Edge Ultra or Roving Edge Device Console, you create a Data Sync Task and select the compartment and buckets you wish to sync and in which direction. The Data Sync Tasks you create can be started automatically or on demand and remain available to reuse from the device console. A bucket can be a source or a target but not both simultaneously.
What happens if my bucket in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has an object with the same name as an object being synced from my device?
To prevent accidental object overwrite, we recommend that you enable object versioning for each bucket in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure you are data syncing to.
What happens if my bucket in Ultra or RED has an object with the same name as an object being synced from my bucket in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?
If an object is being data synced into a bucket and the bucket already has an object of the same name, the object fails to sync, and the existing object remains intact. The sync failure status of the object is logged in the summary report.
Roving Edge Infrastructure service limits
Can I request more than one Roving Edge device in a single request?
You can only request a single node at a time.
What is the object size limit?
Files up to 5 TiB can be provisioned onto a device. Files larger than 5 TiB are skipped in the import process. (Please keep in mind the specific device storage limitations when adding workloads and data to your order).
What is the file name length limit?
Roving Edge supports file names up to 1,024 characters for upload into the object storage bucket.
Security
How is the Roving Edge Infrastructure device protected in transit?
Roving Edge Infrastructure devices are shipped in special packaging designed to provide sufficient protection against the demands of traditional transportation. Each device is equipped with tamper-evident stickers.
What is my security exposure if the Roving Edge Infrastructure device is lost during transit?
In the unlikely event of a device being lost in transit, all data stored on the Roving Edge Infrastructure is always fully encrypted and the device is shipped in a locked state, which requires a special code to unlock and operate.
Does Oracle maintain a chain of custody of my Roving Edge device?
Yes. Oracle rigorously maintains the state change of the Roving Edge Infrastructure device as it moves through the provisioning workflow. You can review the status using the Console or the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure CLI.
What happens to Roving Edge Infrastructure devices once they are returned after use?
Once the device is returned, Oracle will perform a secure wipe process. After each use, the Roving Edge Infrastructure device is sanitized using industry-standard processes before the appliance is returned to usable inventory. The secure sanitization process follows the NIST 800-88 standards. If you are unable to return the device, a one-time unreturnable fee applies.
How do you ensure the security of data while it is being shipped to me?
All data stored on the Roving Edge Infrastructure device is fully encrypted using AES-256 encryption, and the devices are shipped in a locked state. If you are a U.S. Government customer, you may also elect to have a designated courier of your choice pick up your Roving Edge Device(s) from the Oracle data center.
Shipping the Roving Edge Infrastructure device
Who pays for shipping when using the Roving Edge Infrastructure service?
Oracle pays to ship the Roving Edge Infrastructure devices to you within the continental US and the EU. You are responsible for the shipping costs when returning the devices to Oracle.
My Roving Edge Infrastructure device is lost in transit. What should I do?
If you believe that your Roving Edge Infrastructure device is lost in transit, immediately file an Oracle Service Request.
Repair of Roving Edge Infrastructure
My Roving Edge Infrastructure device is not functioning as expected. What should I do?
If your device is not functioning as expected, file an Oracle Service Request. If Oracle support determines that you need a replacement device, Oracle will immediately start provisioning a replacement device for you. Follow these instructions to enter your Service Request so it routes correctly.
- From inside the My Oracle Support (MOS) portal, open a Service Request. “Where is the problem?” provides the 3 options: Hardware, Software, Cloud.
- You will find Roving Edge under the Cloud tab (do not use the Hardware tab).
- Follow the dropdowns and prompts and provide details of the problem.