What is the Azure Stack Edge Mini R?

Azure Stack Edge Mini R is an ultra portable, rugged, edge computing device designed for use in harsh environments. Azure Stack Edge Mini R is delivered as a hardware-as-a-service solution. Microsoft ships you a cloud-managed device that acts as network storage gateway and has a built-in Vision Processing Unit (VPU) that enables accelerated AI-inferencing.

This article provides you an overview of the Azure Stack Edge Mini R solution, key capabilities, and the scenarios where you can deploy this device.

Key capabilities

Azure Stack Edge Mini R has the following capabilities:

Use cases

Here are the various scenarios where Azure Stack Edge Mini R can be used for rapid Machine Learning (ML) inferencing at the edge and preprocessing data before sending it to Azure.

• Inference with Azure Machine Learning - With Azure Stack Edge Mini R, you can run ML models to get quick results that can be acted on before the data is sent to the cloud. The full data set can optionally be transferred to continue to retrain and improve your ML models. For more information on how to use the Azure Machine Learning hardware accelerated models on the Azure Stack Edge Mini R device, see Deploy Azure Machine Learning hardware accelerated models on Azure Stack Edge Mini R.

• Preprocess data - Transform data via compute options such as containers or virtual machines before sending it to Azure to create a more actionable dataset. Preprocessing can be used to:

  • Aggregate data.
  • Modify data, for example to remove personal data.
  • Subset data to optimize storage and bandwidth, or for further analysis.
  • Analyze and react to IoT Events.

• Transfer data over network to Azure - Use Azure Stack Edge Mini R to easily and quickly transfer data to Azure to enable further compute and analytics or for archival purposes.

Components

The Azure Stack Edge Mini R solution comprises an Azure Stack Edge resource, Azure Stack Edge Mini R rugged, ultra portable physical device, and a local web UI.

• Azure Stack Edge Mini R physical device - An ultra portable, rugged, compute and storage device supplied by Microsoft. The device has an onboard battery and weighs less than 7 lbs.

  

  To procure a device, go to the Azure Edge Hardware Center and place an order. Azure Edge Hardware Center service lets you choose from a variety of Azure Stack Edge SKUs as per your business need. You can order multiple units of a device type, ship multiple devices to different locations, save addresses for future orders, and also track the status of your orders.

  Once the order is delivered, you can configure your device and create an Azure Stack Edge resource to manage the device.

  For more information, go to Create an order for your Azure Stack Edge Mini R device.

• Azure Stack Edge resource – A resource in the Azure portal that lets you manage a rugged, Azure Stack Edge Mini R device from a web interface that you can access from different geographical locations. Use the Azure Stack Edge resource to create and manage resources, view, and manage devices and alerts, and manage shares.

• Azure Stack Edge Mini R local web UI - A browser-based local user interface on your Azure Stack Edge Mini R device primarily intended for the initial configuration of the device. Use the local web UI also to run diagnostics, shut down and restart the Azure Stack Edge Pro device, view copy logs, and contact Microsoft Support to file a service request.

  The local web UI on the device currently supports the following languages with their corresponding language codes:

  Language	Code	Language	Code	Language	Code
  English {default}	en	Czech	cs	German	de
  Spanish	es	French	fr	Hungarian	hu
  Italian	it	Japanese	ja	Korean	ko
  Dutch	nl	Polish	pl	Portuguese - Brazil	pt-br
  Portuguese - Portugal	pt-pt	Russian	ru	Swedish	sv
  Turkish	tr	Chinese - simplified	zh-hans	Chinese - traditional	zh-hant

Region availability

Azure Stack Edge Mini R physical device, Azure resource, and target storage account to which you transfer data do not all have to be in the same region.

• Resource availability - For a list of all the regions where the Azure Stack Edge resource is available, go to Azure products available by region.

• Device availability - For a list of all the countries/regions where the Azure Stack Edge Mini R device is available, go to Availability section in the Azure Stack Edge Mini R tab for Azure Stack Edge Mini R pricing.

• Destination Storage accounts - The storage accounts that store the data are available in all Azure regions. The regions where the storage accounts store Azure Stack Edge Mini R data should be located close to where the device is located for optimum performance. A storage account located far from the device results in long latencies and slower performance.

Azure Stack Edge service is a non-regional service. For more information, see Regions and Availability Zones in Azure. Azure Stack Edge service does not have dependency on a specific Azure region, making it resilient to zone-wide outages and region-wide outages.

For a discussion of considerations for choosing a region for the Azure Stack Edge service, device, and data storage, see Choosing a region for Azure Stack Edge.

Device availability for new customers

Azure Stack Edge devices are only available to new customers with the following use cases:

• Validated partner workloads.
• Large scale deployments.

Validated partner workloads

Devices are available for new customers who utilize Azure Stack Edge as an infrastructure platform to validate their solution. Partner workloads may not be supported on all devices. For details, consult your Azure Stack Edge partner.

If you already use Azure Stack Edge to run validated workloads, we support you, your solutions, and your end customers.

• Azure Private MEC / Azure Private 5G Core offers simple, scalable, and secure deployment of private 5G core networks within the Azure private multi-access edge compute solution. There's an additional screening process to be approved as an Azure PMEC customer.
• Azure Orbital Cloud Access for Azure Government solutions enables connectivity from the cloud wherever businesses and public sector organizations need it. Azure Orbital Cloud Access provides low-latency, one hop access to the cloud from anywhere on the planet, making it easier to bring satellite-based communications into your enterprise cloud operation.
• SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud (DMC) is a cloud-based marketing execution system designed to provide the link between production and business in supply chain management.
• Azure Government – We continue to facilitate and support Azure Government customers and the Defense Industrial Base.

Large scale deployments

Azure Stack Edge is optimized for edge scenarios that typically involve hundreds or thousands of devices across a high number of locations. Our hardware as a service solution is only available for deployments of at least 100 nodes.

Next steps for existing customers with qualified workloads

• Submit an Azure Stack Edge sign-up form via Azure portal.

Next steps for alternate edge solutions

Use the following links to get information about alternate infrastructure solutions:

• Azure Arc – Hybrid and multicloud management solution.
• Azure Stack HCI – Hyperconverged infrastructure solution.
• Explore the HCI Integrated Systems catalog.

Next steps

• Review the Azure Stack Edge Mini R system requirements.