Get answers to frequently asked questions about Roving Edge Infrastructure.
Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure is an infrastructure 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 in clusters 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.
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.
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:
Note: Roving Edge Station and station clusters are currently only available to U.S. Government customers.
Roving Edge Device (RED) is the key component of Oracle Roving Edge Infrastructure.
A RED Cluster is composed of Roving Edge Devices networked together via a layer 2 switch, provided as part of the Roving Edge Cluster Kit. Clusters provide increased capacity and durability. RED Clusters are available as standalone clusters of 5 to 15 REDs or station clusters of 15 to 30 REDs housed inside a physical 24-foot ISO container that provides a portable shelter. Station clusters are only available to U.S. Government customers.
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 (only available to U.S. Government customers) 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.
Users with policies that allow access to edge resources will be able to request and configure Ultra or RED nodes and clusters via a workflow in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console. First create a node or cluster 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 or cluster.
When you submit the request for approval
Request tracking is available; you can track the status of your request using either the Console or CLI.
When you receive your node or cluster, 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.
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.
Roving Edge Infrastructure service is supported in US-Ashburn-1 (IAD), US-Gov-Phoenix-1 (TUS), US-Luke-1 (LUK), with plans to expand into other regions.
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, Roving Edge Device, and Roving Edge standalone cluster configurations are priced per day of possession of a device or cluster, 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.
The prefabricated Roving Edge Station enclosure and the station cluster are priced per month, with a minimum commitment of 24 months, which may be extended to 36 months. All components of the Roving Edge Station (Roving Edge Station, station cluster of 15 to 30 REDs, and Cluster Kit) must be ordered together. Billing will be based on monthly possession of the equipment.
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.
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.
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.
Please refer to the command-line interface requirements.
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.
After you create a Roving Edge Infrastructure device “node” or “cluster” 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.
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. A single RED has about 43 TB of usable storage, while the usable space per cluster varies by number of nodes—from about 35 to 46 TB per device.
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 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.
To prevent accidental object overwrite, we recommend that you enable object versioning for each bucket in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure you are data syncing to.
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.
Yes, with Roving Edge devices you can request either a single node or a cluster of 5 to 15 nodes (15 to 30 if deploying in Roving Edge Station). Roving Edge Ultra, however, is a standalone device and is not available as a cluster. You can only request a single node at a time.
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).
Roving Edge supports file names up to 1,024 characters for upload into the object storage bucket.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oracle pays to ship the Roving Edge Infrastructure devices to you within the continental USA. You are responsible for the shipping costs back to Oracle.
If you believe that your Roving Edge Infrastructure device is lost in transit, immediately file an Oracle Service Request.
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.