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Whitepaper-Placing-Datacenter-Storage-Technology-Tactical-Edge

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WHITE PAPER Placing Data Center Storage Technology at the Tactical Edge mrcy.com 2 2 COMPUTING CHALLENGES AT THE TACTICAL EDGE Big Sensor Data and High Latency Mission-critical defense systems now employ countless sensors to collect imaging data and to track electromagnetic communications, radar responses and physical vibrations such as sonar and voice recognition. These sensors are continually being improved, providing greater precision and expanded data streams with every upgrade or advancement. The result of these increasingly powerful sensors is an influx of big data, to the point where some individual systems must process terabytes of input per second. Department of Defense customers are using compute- heavy applications such as artificial intelligence, signals intelligence and sensor fusion to analyze and convert this ever-increasing amount of data into useful and actionable intelligence. Additionally, this big data is also rich with development possibilities for new and sophisticated applications such as facial recognition, airframe performance and electromagnetic waveforms. However, the storage systems deployed on most vehicles, aircraft or vessels do not provide enough available storage or bandwidth to take full advantage of the information being gathered. For example, the onboard storage system of an F-35 aircraft can only store 5-10 minutes of combined data collected by all its sensors. Instead, much of the data collected is offloaded via satellite/radio transmission to a traditional data center for processing. These data centers, often located far from the battlefield, can easily provide the amount of storage needed. Yet the latency—or the time it takes to transmit and receive data— does not make data centers a suitable solution for the U.S. DoD's vision for a digitally connected and agile military. If connected processing and storage resources were available locally, it could eliminate this time-consuming process, and increase both the amount of accessible data and the ability to make well-informed decisions at the edge. SWaP and Environment Considerations Taking equipment out of a data center and placing it at the edge normally requires making technological compromises. This is because traditional storage systems aboard land, air and sea vehicles face size, weight and power (SWaP) limitations and therefore cannot capture, store and process the amount of data collected by modern sensors. Defense and aerospace computing components also face a high likelihood of exposure to different environmental conditions, such as high vibrations, sudden physical impact, altitude, temperature and humidity, and parts must generally be able to meet the following requirements: ▪ MIL-STD-167 — Shipboard equipment vibration and shock ▪ MIL-STD-461 — Electromagnetic interference emissions ▪ MIL-STD-810 — Environmental field readiness and conditions such as shock and vibration ▪ MIL-S-901 — Installation in shock-isolated cabinets that protect against external explosives Hard disk drives (HDD) traditionally used for large amounts of storage use electricity to power moving parts, known as platters and spindles, when reading and writing data. These moving parts are susceptible to damage or malfunction from extreme conditions, and are also heavy, noisy, and significant heat emissions generators. Solid state drives (SSDs), also known as flash storage, do not contain moving parts and are faster, noiseless, dense, lighter, and only use electricity when writing data and not when reading data. However, they have traditionally been much more cost-prohibitive than HDDs when it comes to providing a vast amount of storage. For these reasons, most data centers today use a data tiering method, in which a hybrid mix of various HDDs and SSDs are partitioned into different sections, such as a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) for backups, and numerous other disks and partitions for archival, rarely accessed, The advancement of sensor technology such as radar, image capture and radio frequency devices has resulted in a massive increase in the amount of data collected by defense customers. This information, known as big data, has proved to be difficult to store, access or analyze in real time. Solving this storage issue is vital to ensure that the critical decision- makers of today and tomorrow can take well-informed actions and avoid limiting the capabilities of current, emerging and future sensor technology. This paper explores the data storage challenges that must be overcome and presents new technology from Mercury Systems and VAST Data Federal as a compelling solution.

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