The Log
In the world of 'edge,' the exciting announcement from Microsoft Ignite 2024 was Azure Local, which builds on Azure Stack HCI to extend Azure cloud capabilities to the edge. It allows organisations to bring their most important workloads closer to the sources of data for greater performance with low latency. Azure Local leverages Azure Arc for consistency in managing resources from cloud to edge. And for the first time, Azure Local can be operated in disconnected environments such as sovereign clouds, where security and regulatory compliance mean Azure cloud connections are not allowed.
Azure Local unifies all of Microsoft's offerings across distributed infrastructure into one seamless experience to make building and managing hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge environments easier than ever. We are an edge hardware manufacturer with expertise in high-performance compute that goes into government agencies. We are excited to see how Azure Local will enhance edge computing across regulated and mission-critical sectors.
Azure Local represents a significant step towards enabling secure, scalable, and flexible hybrid infrastructure for edge and disconnected locations. It integrates and extends the Azure ecosystem, enabling organisations to innovate faster and push workloads to the edge when needed. Some of the areas engineers are most excited to explore are:
- Edge Flexibility: This involves deploying Azure Local on low-spec hardware, thus ensuring affordable solutions for resource-constrained environments without compromising performance.
- Disconnected Operations: Supports isolated setups with regulatory compliance in mind and no reliance on the cloud. This feature aligns with the needs of government agencies that need to have segregated, secured systems for regulatory compliance.
- Unified Management: This will be able to decrease operations and overhead by managing edge infrastructure from Azure's well-known portal and tools.
- Enhanced Security: Advanced protection finally grants you protection against ever-evolving cyber threats with capabilities such as Trusted Launch and integration with Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
- AI-Ready Support for GPUs: Nvidia's A2 and L40 GPUs, among others, are supported to achieve real-time inferencing at the edge.
HYPR Azure
Antillion HYPR combines our Pace hardware platform with the world's leading hypervisors, operating systems, container platforms, and edge software to deliver integrated, powerful, flexible, and efficient edge and disconnected infrastructure. We design and validate HYPR Rigs using both our Pace Air and rugged Pace Frontier platforms to enable Azure Local at connected near edge environments as well as disconnected, highly challenging environments.
Our HYPR F5 platform is already available in the Azure Stack HCI Catalog and we are excited to announce many more Pace Air and Frontier platforms will soon be in the catalogue validated for Windows 2025 and the latest version of Azure Local, which will be available for general release in early 2025.
