The nature of the operations of energy companies along with the distributed and often remote locations where they operate are an ideal use case for edge computing – processing data and performing analytics closer to where the data is being generated.
By performing sophisticated monitoring and analysis of systems, energy companies can increase profitability and safety by minimizing downtime, reducing risk, increasing efficiency, and automating processes. The real-time, continuous monitoring and analytics capabilities at the edge give energy companies the ability to identify and respond to dangerous issues proactively, improving operations and avoiding potentially catastrophic issues before they occur.
The possibilities for optimizing operations are endless, however the energy industry faces some significant challenges which are unlike many other industries. The remote nature of many of these facilities means that connectivity is severely limited. Systems there need to respond in real-time, so they must have the ability to store, process, and analyze data locally because it simply isn’t possible to send all of that data back to a central repository for processing and analysis.
Additionally, these locations are often environmentally harsh and do not have IT personnel onsite, so the systems must be flexible enough to support a variety of hardware devices, be highly available, and simple to operate.
NodeWeaver’s unique combination of features makes it ideally suited as an edge infrastructure platform for remote locations frequently found in energy-related operations:
- Flexibility
- NodeWeaver is software only and runs on virtually any x86-based hardware, including fanless, ruggedized, industrial systems specifically engineered for harsh environments
- Can create highly resilient clusters using heterogeneous hardware
- Hardware can be optimized and right-sized based on deployment requirements
- Reliability and autonomic management
- Create highly resilient clusters with as few as 2 nodes
- NodeWeaver's autonomic features enable simple, scale-out expansion, load-balancing across the cluster, and fix errors without manual intervention.
- Cost Savings
- Low, per-node pricing with all features included
- Lightweight codebase allows NodeWeaver to run on smaller devices, including SoCs such as Intel Atom and AMD Epyc and Ryzens, to enable the creation of affordable, resilient, and scalable compute clusters.
Partner Spotlight:
One of NodeWeaver’s partners delivers complete solutions for remote monitoring and control of energy management systems, which consist of tools designed to monitor, analyze and manage an installation.
They specialize in monitoring commercial and industrial photovoltaic plants and have recently deployed their solution to manage a large-scale solar farm in Africa. Given the remote nature of this installation, system resiliency and the ability to autonomically address failures and maintain maximum uptime is vital. Additionally, due to the harsh environmental conditions and limited space, standard server hardware is not appropriate – specialized, rugged hardware that can withstand these conditions is required.
NodeWeaver’s software-only approach provides the flexibility to choose the hardware necessary for the application, and its lightweight codebase also allows it to run on small devices. They evaluated VMware and Nutanix as well and selected NodeWeaver due to its flexibility, reliability, and unmatched time to value.