Alibaba Cloud Luo Xiaofei: Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud, product evolution from resources to scenarios

Introduction to : 160f7f0291231c On July 1, 2021, the GIDC Global Internet Data Conference with the theme of "Cloud This conference is guided by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and hosted by Aidi.com. It invites experts from various fields such as government and industry to focus on "new infrastructure", "green data center", "cloud-network synergy", "cloud-side synergy", etc. In-depth discussions on hot topics in the industry will promote the healthy development of the cloud computing industry in the 5G era. Luo Xiaofei, chief product architect of Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud, was invited to participate in the conference, sharing Alibaba Cloud's exploration and thinking in the field of edge cloud, how to help enterprises increase value in terms of product evolution, technological innovation, and scenario applications.

On July 1, 2021, the GIDC Global Internet Data Conference with the theme of "cloud gathering shadows, converging networks and gathering students" was successfully held in Shanghai. This conference is guided by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and hosted by Aidi.com. It invites experts from various fields such as government and industry to focus on "new infrastructure", "green data center", "cloud-network synergy", "cloud-side synergy", etc. In-depth discussions on hot topics in the industry will promote the healthy development of the cloud computing industry in the 5G era. Luo Xiaofei, chief product architect of Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud, was invited to participate in the conference, sharing Alibaba Cloud's exploration and thinking in the field of edge cloud, how to help enterprises increase value in terms of product evolution, technological innovation, and scenario applications.

The national "14th Five-Year Plan" outline clearly states that it is necessary to "coordinate the development of cloud services and edge computing services." Large-scale commercial use of 5G technology has further accelerated the integration with cloud computing technology. Edge cloud is an extension of cloud computing capabilities from the center to the edge, so as to meet the business needs of customers in different industries for low latency, large bandwidth, and nearby data computing.

Definition and shape of edge cloud

When talking about the definition and understanding of edge cloud, Luo Xiaofei believes that there may be differences in the definition of edge cloud from different industry perspectives, but in the end, there is no conflict in the integration of customer business scenarios and the solution of customer business problems. The edge cloud is a large-scale distributed deployment of computing nodes in the form of resources, and a manageable, safe, and easy-to-use distributed cloud formed by various nodes in cooperation with each other in the form of business. Alibaba Cloud's edge cloud nodes are based on the Feitian Kernel's technical architecture to build a distributed and miniaturized cloud computing platform close to the client side. Feitian is a super-large-scale general-purpose computing operating system independently developed by Alibaba Cloud and serving the world. It supports multiple forms, namely central region, local region, edge cloud node and on-site computing node, allowing customers to share all products on various forms of cloud .

long-term investment in technology, products, and resources 160f7f0291243b

Luo Xiaofei believes that Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud is a long-term accumulation of resources construction, technological innovation, and product creation. Alibaba Cloud started building CDN nodes very early and has more than 2,800 nodes covering the world. Technically, the characteristics of edge cloud nodes are different from those of the central region, that is, closer to users, lower latency, and better cost, but the stability of a single node is not as high as that of the central region. CDN itself is a typical edge cloud business scenario. When customers choose Alibaba Cloud CDN, they choose a stable and reliable cloud service. The capabilities of intelligent scheduling, topology awareness, fault escape, distributed management and control, automated installation operation and maintenance configuration, and multi-point coordination that are precipitated in the process of serving customers can be further applied to edge cloud technology scenarios to realize edge cloud services. High stability and high availability. In the content distribution scenario, the CDN mainly consumes downlink bandwidth. Idle computing resources and uplink bandwidth provide the possibility for a comprehensive upgrade of edge cloud computing, so as to carry more scenarios that require computing at the edge. Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud supports the native capabilities of the edge cloud, so that different applications can be deployed at the edge. Typical services include CDN, view computing, cloud terminals, cloud desktops, and cloud games. The edge cloud node ENS provides unified resource construction management and delivery capabilities, allowing partners to use ENS resources as if they were using a unified operating system.

Flexible product delivery forms meet the needs of different scenarios

Alibaba Cloud Edge Cloud supports a one-stop solution and an integrated solution. The one-stop solution is re-precipitated on the base of the edge cloud node and now has a relatively general productization capability. The integrated solution is the concept of cloud-connected nodes, which supports the integrated sales of software and hardware externally, and customers can build their own edge computing nodes to build application scenarios.

The edge cloud node and the network must be involved in the use of edge services by customers. The two must be related. All business information that needs to be processed is solved on the edge nodes. A hierarchical structure must be adopted, such as For the processing of some local computing services, the local computing node can handle part of the customer’s business scenarios, and some of the business scenarios need to go up. It may go to the edge cloud node. The edge cloud node may not be able to handle all of it, and it needs to be returned. To the central cloud or the origin of the business, from this perspective, the network and the edge cloud must be associated. Based on this, Alibaba Cloud also provides end-to-edge acceleration capabilities, that is, from the MEC platform or IoT device to the edge cloud node, through Technical means such as optimization of the transmission protocol and control of the outsourcing strategy provide end-to-side acceleration capabilities. In this way, from the edge cloud node to the central Reigon, the connection between the MEC node with the operator and the central region and the local region is realized through cloud-network integration technology. In addition, the availability of a single node in the network will definitely not be completely reliable, and the high availability of edge cloud node services can be achieved through the integrated scheduling capabilities of the cloud and network. Finally, we can also rely on mature SDN technology on the edge cloud to provide high-availability collaboration and cloud-native networks.

The business value of

Luo Xiaofei said: The business value of edge cloud depends on what problems it helps customers solve in the actual process. The specific summary is as follows:

• good business flexibility and , through Alibaba Cloud, the business can be distributed and configured to all edge cloud nodes across the country within 1 minute, which greatly improves the efficiency of business deployment and configuration.
• has better cost , resources can be used through some multiplexing or other modes, and the cost will become better.
• easy to and maintain 160f7f029125ae, Alibaba Cloud provides standardized platform capabilities, reduces operation and maintenance costs, and improves operation and maintenance efficiency.

Luo Xiaofei also shared a set of customer measured data: improve the upstream quality of the host by 5%, make the push stream more stable, and reduce the live streaming rate; increase the percentage of users' successful connections by 0.5%, and reduce millions of failed requests every day; one-to-one The completion rate of online courses has increased from 97% to 99.5%, and the completion rate has improved significantly.

In the past three or four years,

Typical edge cloud usage scenario: live online

The ability of online live broadcast, from the push to the processing of the stream, and to the final distribution, and then the edge cloud computing capability is used on the distribution end, and the edge cloud computing can be used to build a system on the push end to achieve beauty, Special effects and image quality enhancement processing. The distributor can do some barrage distribution, and then do some barrage receiving, and can build its own set of RTC platform architecture. Many customers use this product model in online live broadcast.

edge cloud typical use scenario: edge pressure test

There are mainly two types of traditional stress testing. One is stress testing on the central region, and the second is stress testing on the terminal. The problem with the stress testing on the central region is that the stress testing ends are particularly concentrated, and many desired services are scattered. The effect cannot be achieved. It is difficult to find so many terminals for pressure testing on the terminal, and it is not convenient to install some pressure testing programs on the terminal, so there is a scenario on the edge side, based on 2800 Alibaba Cloud Edge cloud nodes use the capabilities of flexible and standardized edge cloud nodes to do corresponding stress testing, which saves time, effort and efficiency.

Typical edge cloud usage scenario: content acceleration

Another scenario is that some businesses need to build their own CDNs, but they will face problems such as heavy asset cost investment, high operation and maintenance requirements, and technical optimization difficulties. By using Alibaba Cloud edge cloud nodes, customers can quickly build their own The CDN platform eliminates the long process of self-building nodes. At the same time, as a CDN service provider, Alibaba Cloud also has a lot of precipitation in operation and maintenance and technical optimization, which can better help customers quickly implement platform construction. In summary, the future edge cloud technology will inevitably continue to evolve in the direction of distributed, miniaturization, autonomy, synergy, and cloud native. Alibaba Cloud will give full play to its advantages in products, technologies, and ecology, and provide flexibility and openness. , A secure edge cloud computing base, plus edge applications developed with partners, serve customers in various vertical industries, create more scenario-based solutions, and promote the edge cloud industry.

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