Cisco Unified Edge At a Glance
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Contents
We're at a critical inflection point. The edge has emerged as the place where the physical and digital worlds meet, demanding real-time processing and analysis of data to deliver informed decisions, improved experiences, and increased productivity. However, legacy infrastructure wasn't built for the AI era and can't keep up with the scale, speed, and intelligence required by AI-driven operations. While much of the model training happens in the data center, the shift of test-time inference to the edge makes it the new frontier for enterprise AI.
Deploying AI at the edge remains complicated and demanding. Interoperability, security, cost, and rigid deployment models are all potential performance and productivity blockers. The increasing demand for AI and digitalization at the edge necessitates a full system rethink. Evolving business needs and the sheer scale of highly distributed edge environments and modern AI workloads create a beyond-human complexity nightmare. We need something more than just more boxes; we need a brand-new edge infrastructure and operations vision.
Cisco Unified Edge is an AI-ready system that redefines computing at the edge by converging compute, networking, storage, and security. Designed from the edge up for the next decade, the modular design is future-ready, energy-efficient, easy-to-service, and can be tailored to support today's workloads and use cases while remaining adaptable to the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Seamless integration with third-party technologies and validated solutions for industry-specific needs ensure both compatibility and optimized performance.
Delivering breakthrough operational simplicity at scale, this software-defined system features centralized cloud management, zero-touch deployment, curated blueprints, and automated orchestration. These capabilities enable high scalability with minimal complexity. End-to-end observability with real-time analytics accelerates error detection and correction, helping minimize service outages. Security is designed-in, with integrated physical and digital safeguards to protect applications and data at the edge while multi-layered security capabilities protect infrastructure, applications, and AI models.
By combining compute, networking, security, and storage into a full-stack, AI-ready system, Cisco Unified Edge introduces a fundamentally different infrastructure and operational paradigm for the enterprise edge. Unlike other solutions that may lack critical capabilities or are not optimized for edge use cases, this system offers fully validated solutions that deliver AI-era performance, simplicity, and security.
Figure 1. Cisco Unified Edge
Benefits
● Future-ready performance: Adaptable to meet today's and tomorrow's edge workload demands with ease, stopping the rip-and-replace cycle with a fully integrated, modular edge environment designed for the next decade. Deploy applications and infrastructure faster and profit sooner with proven solutions that are tested and certified for vertical-specific workloads and use cases, ensuring compatibility and performance.
● Full-scale simplicity: Onboard quickly and with ease without the need for highly skilled IT expertise or on-site visits. Whether deploying ten systems or ten thousand, zero-touch provisioning, curated blueprints and automation ensure consistent, effortless rollout. A compatible operating model from core to edge makes it easy to scale, upgrade, and support your infrastructure.
● Designed-in security: Prevent tampering at the edge with robust physical and digital protection. Proven policy-based templates eliminate configuration drift across sites while embedded, zero-trust security capabilities ensure unmatched protection for your edge infrastructure, data, and AI models.
● Cisco UCS XE9305 Chassis
◦ Three-rack unit (3RU), short-depth (18") form factor with multiple mounting options
◦ Five front-facing slots for hot-swappable sled-based compute and networking nodes
◦ Two Cisco Unified Edge management controllers with embedded 25G switches
◦ Five hot-swappable fan modules, acoustically optimized
● Cisco UCS XE130c M8 Compute Node
◦ One Intel® Xeon® 6 SoC processor; 12-/20-/32-core options
◦ Four memory channels and two DIMMs per channel, up to 768GB of total memory
◦ Two 25G midplane connected NICs and two 1/10G front-panel network ports
◦ One GPU slot for a HH/HL 75W GPU
◦ RAID protected dual M.2 SATA SSDs for boot
◦ Up to four E3.S form factor NVMe SSDs (up to 120TB total storage)
◦ Up to one PCIe Gen5 slot for a NIC adapter or accelerator (DPU, IPU)
● Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service
◦ SaaS-based infrastructure management
Get more information about Cisco Unified Edge and learn how it can future-proof and transform your edge environment at cisco.com/go/unifiededge.