Western Digital Delivers Extreme Server Performance, Mobility and Military-Grade Toughness at the Edge

Western Digital’s new server offerings are more mobile and tougher than ever before. The new Ultrastar Edge and Ultrastar Edge-MR servers enable organizations to deploy remote data capture and analytics at the edge. By processing the data closer to the source, organizations can lower latency and reduce the amount of traffic on the network backbone. These edge servers are essential when connections are unreliable and potentially insecure, which, without them, can make it difficult, if not impossible, to deliver data center cloud services in extreme conditions.

Ultrastar Edge and Ultrastar Edge-MR have 40 cores, a GPU, 512GB of memory and over 60TB of Ultrastar NVMe flash storage and are in the process of being validated for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI. With Azure Stack HCI, organizations can easily scale up and out in a highly resilient, highly available converged and hyper-converged infrastructure.

Azure Stack HCI’s built in hybrid cloud features enable simplified access to Azure Backup, Azure Disaster Recovery, Azure Arc, and more, giving organizations greater resiliency and the ability to go to the cloud whenever they want. In addition, Azure Stack HCI solutions offer better security than any other hyper-converged offering, ideal for organizations with higher security requirements or in military deployments.

Azure Stack HCI supports two and three-node switchless solutions that will be ideal for Ultrastar Edge and Ultrastar Edge-MR deployments, eliminating the cost and complexity of purchasing and configuring a hardware switch and networking.

The Ultrastar Edge comes in a robust transport case with wheels and a handle for a truly mobile edge experience.

For more extreme environments, the Ultra Edge-MR is designed and tested against multiple military standards, MIL-STD-810G-CHG-1 and MIL-STD-461G and meets IP32 ingress protection. It comes in a military grade case with molded ridges for easy stacking of units and creation of remote compute clusters. The internal suspension safeguards the server from shock and vibration during transit and includes a built-in Faraday cage, protecting the server from external electromagnetic events and also reduces the likelihood of detection during sensitive operations.

The user can remove the front and rear end caps for airflow and attach them to the sides of the unit for easy storage. A bi-directional valve allows air pressure equalization, while keeping out dust and debris. .