The development of smart devices that can be deployed wherever there is a network connection is driving the need for innovations in distributed computer systems management. An evolving edge-computing model uses “pods” of servers, storage, and networking hardware with groups of Internet of Things (IoT) devices at many locations under the control of a single organization. The main advantages of this model are easy scalability and significant reduction of the costs for transporting large data volumes over limited-bandwidth wide-area networks (WANs). Edge computing also addresses the need for low-latency decision-making.

The complication for organizations implementing edge computing solutions is the challenge of deploying, managing, and securing distributed systems with hundreds to thousands of edge devices and servers.

In this guide, we describe an integrated and easy-to-use solution that is based on products from Dell Technologies and NVIDIA that address these management challenges. Dell Technologies Solutions engineers, with support from NVIDIA, conducted proof-of-concept testing in our engineering labs. This guide discusses the motivation for edge computing and the integration of NVIDIA® Fleet Command™, the NVIDIA NGC™ catalog, and NGC Private Registry, along with Dell hardware to quickly deploy edge analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.