VMware Inc. has unveiled a new appliance that brings analytics and serverless computing to edge devices.
A preview of the Linux-based AWS Greengrass Core VM Appliance 0.5 is available. “It lets you run local computation, messaging, data cache, sync and machine learning inference capabilities, on connected devices, in a secure manner.”
The offering uses the recently released AWS Greengrass software by Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS). This software is used to extend the functionality of the platform to local devices. It’s part of a growing trend that analytics and other computing services are being brought to edge devices rather than transferring data to centralized locations for processing.
The new appliance will allow users to deploy AWS services, focusing on Greengrass functionality like serverless Lambda functions, to any device that runs on VMware’s vSphere cloud computing platform.
Amazon claims that the new AWS Greengrass appliance allows connected devices to run AWS Lambda functions and make predictions based upon machine learning models. They can also keep device data in sync and securely communicate with other devices — even if they are not connected to the Internet.
The Greengrass appliance is built on the integration between virtualization leader VMware, and cloud computing leader AWS. Last August, the companies announced that joint customers would be able to run their on-premises VMware environments on AWS cloud through the launch of “VMware Cloud On AWS”.
VMware stated that the Greengrass appliance is similar to the one mentioned in the previous offering. It allows you to run AWS services on vSphere at the edge or in the datacenter, such as IoT-based devices.
VMware stated that Greengrass can be run on-premises on vSphere so customers can integrate Greengrass using Lambda functions with other applications and services running on vSphere infrastructure at edge. “Placing cloud services at the same locations as devices and data will give organizations greater ability to innovate and build intelligent system that exceeds what’s possible in cloud, datacenter or edge alone,” VMware stated.
The Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS OS is used by the appliance. It can also run on any VMware solution that supports this platform.
Source code for the “AWS Greengrass on VMware vSphere” project is available on GitHub.
