Simplify edge management at scale with Red Hat Edge Manager

Organizations extending IT architectures to edge environments are faced with substantial operational challenges. Effective management of edge computing requires streamlined, centralized control of potentially millions of dispersed devices. This complexity spans numerous sectors including retail, manufacturing, energy, automotive, telecommunications, healthcare, and defense, each with unique yet overlapping requirements.

Manageability remains the primary obstacle preventing widespread adoption of edge computing. Traditional manual processes are cumbersome, costly, and prone to human error, significantly hampering operational efficiency. Enterprises managing vast fleets of edge devices need scalable solutions that simplify deployment, security, updates, and monitoring. For example, sectors such as manufacturing and retail demand solutions capable of managing millions of connected vehicles or telecom equipment dispersed across remote locations.

Another critical challenge is security. Edge devices often operate in isolated, publicly accessible, or remote environments with minimal onsite personnel. As such, devices are vulnerable to theft, damage, or physical tampering. Businesses require robust, security-focused onboarding processes, ongoing security management, and automated update capabilities to proactively identify and mitigate these risks effectively.

Connectivity adds an additional layer of complexity. Many edge environments face intermittent or entirely air-gapped connectivity. Manufacturing floors, for instance, frequently operate without internet access due to security or privacy concerns. Similarly, offshore retail floors and factories in remote locations deal with unreliable or limited bandwidth. A practical edge management solution must offer robust offline management capabilities, supporting operational continuity regardless of network reliability.

Personnel constraints further complicate edge device management. Unlike traditional IT departments, edge locations typically rely on operational technology (OT) staff with less specialized technical expertise. These OT personnel require intuitive, simplified management tools that reduce the technical barrier to effective operation. This can help the implementation of proactive actions such as preventive operations maintenance, contingency planning, and timely deployment of backup devices.

To address these challenges comprehensively, Red Hat developed Red Hat® Edge Manager, an end-to-end lifecycle management solution specifically designed for edge devices at scale. Edge Manager simplifies management from initial onboarding and provisioning through ongoing operational maintenance and device decommissioning. It handles everything from operating system (OS) and configuration updates, customizable OS images, transactional deployment capabilities, and workload deployment and monitoring.

Edge Manager adopts a declarative management approach, using Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform for comprehensive infrastructure resource management, allowing organizations to define templates and rollout policies that enforce consistent behavior across devices, regardless of their current state. This makes sure there is uniformity across deployments and reduces configuration drift—a persistent problem that arises when configurations diverge over time, complicating maintenance and management.

Integration with Red Hat’s existing platforms such as Ansible Automation Platform and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes further enhances management capabilities, allowing centralized control over large fleets of edge devices. Organizations benefit from automated device registration, provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management, all presented within a unified interface.

Retail point-of-sale infrastructure

Retail organizations managing thousands of point-of-sale (POS) systems require reliable updates within short maintenance windows. Edge Manager streamlines device lifecycle management, automating OS updates, security patches, and application deployment across geographically distributed stores. Using predefined templates and rollout policies, retailers can make sure there is consistency, reduce human error, and efficiently manage their edge infrastructure.

Example implementation: A large retailer using Edge Manager operates hundreds of locations worldwide with several applications running at each site. Traditionally a Red Hat Enterprise Linux user, the retailer has over 30,000 hosts across both central and distributed environments. The retailer uses Edge Manager to streamline several challenges related to edge devices, including, most pressingly, how fleets of devices can be updated simultaneously in the short window when stores are closed in any given timezone.

Manufacturing automation

In manufacturing environments, especially automotive plants, centralized management of robotic systems and industrial equipment is essential. Companies use Edge Manager to automate software deployments, manage configuration drift, and streamline operations. This capability reduces downtime and increases production consistency by making all devices operate under unified policies.

Example implementation: A midsize manufacturing company has a large number of hardware assets, and there are frequent instances where the locations of those assets are unclear. A management solution that acts as a single platform across asset types, such as Edge Manager, helps alleviate this issue. Additionally, the company is moving toward a software-led transformation, but needs a templated solution that alleviates some of the need to upskill teams. Edge Manager offers a single dashboard, templates, and gives users with fewer specialized skills the ability to interact with systems.

Critical industrial infrastructure management

Industries such as oil and gas face unique challenges managing devices located in remote and hazardous environments, such as offshore rigs. With support for air-gapped environments and intermittent connectivity, Edge Manager lowers operational costs by minimizing the need for expensive, on-site technician visits.

Example implementation: A large oil company needs a solution that moves toward software-defined control, and is able to remotely monitor and configure devices from templates. However, the solution should not be exclusive to a single vendor, and must keep data off the cloud. Edge Manager facilitates centralized, template-based configuration and security-focused monitoring of devices, advancing software-defined control without reliance on a single vendor. It fully supports air-gapped and on-premise environments, keeping sensitive operational data off the cloud.

Healthcare automation and compliance

Healthcare organizations can use Edge Manager to digitize and automate laboratory processes, enhancing operational accuracy and compliance. The declarative management approach allows organizations to consistently enforce configurations and security protocols across the entire fleet of lab equipment.

Example implementation: A global healthcare provider deploys Red Hat Edge Manager to manage and standardize blood-testing equipment across multiple laboratories. Using predefined templates, the organization makes sure all devices consistently meet regulatory compliance and security standards, significantly reducing errors caused by manual processes. Real-time monitoring and updates further optimize device performance and reliability, allowing staff to quickly identify and address issues.

Defense and aerospace deployment management

Defense contractors require advanced solutions for managing highly secure, air-gapped, or intermittently connected devices, such as drones and datacenter-based artificial intelligence (AI) training hardware. Red Hat partners, including major defense contractors, use Edge Manager’s scalable fleet management capabilities to streamline complex missions and improve device reliability in challenging operational scenarios. 

Example implementation: A defense contractor uses Edge Manager to manage fleets of autonomous drones deployed on missions without reliable network connectivity. The declarative templates enforce standardized configurations, software updates, and security policies, even in fully air-gapped conditions. Edge Manager’s robust lifecycle management makes sure drones remain mission-ready with minimal human intervention. Additionally, its flexible API-driven architecture integrates into existing defense systems, providing comprehensive visibility and operational reliability across all hardware, including AI training devices in secure datacenters.

Example implementation: A large network partner uses Edge Manager to manage Red Hat solutions in combination with its own technologies to provide the backbone of its cloud-native development environment.

To effectively manage large-scale edge computing deployments, it is important to understand how Edge Manager’s declarative fleet management approach simplifies operations to define “desired states.” A “desired state” is a term for how IT managers define how devices in the fleet behave. Creating a custom fleet configuration presents a number of options; for example, using tagging or a GitOps process. Then, a yaml file that says “here is what I want a fleet of devices to look like” can be given to Edge Manager, which will take that and apply it to all of the devices in the fleet. This approach allows users to define desired states through device templates and rollout policies, clearly specifying how each device within a fleet should behave.

Using Edge Manager, users can declare specific configurations and operational standards without needing to individually address each device’s current state or location. Templates define consistent parameters, such as operating system versions, configurations, and application workloads. Once these templates and rollout policies are set, Edge Manager automatically enforces compliance across all devices within the fleet. This eliminates manual oversight, significantly reduces the potential for human error, and creates a consistent, deterministic state across potentially millions of devices.

High-scale centralized management

Edge Manager is designed to manage tens of thousands of devices from a centralized platform. It integrates with Ansible Automation Platform and Advanced Red Hat Cluster Management, providing a unified, aggregated view of managed devices. This integration supports automated device registration, deployment, and health check monitoring, enabling organizations to efficiently scale their edge operations.

Robust lifecycle management

Edge Manager offers comprehensive lifecycle management, covering security-focused onboarding, provisioning, deployment, health check monitoring, and eventual device decommissioning. This includes management of the underlying hardware infrastructure, operating systems, and workloads—whether traditional applications, containerized workloads through Red Hat Device Edge, or full Red Hat OpenShift® deployments—facilitating continuous operational stability and reliability.

Flexible API-based integration

With its API-first architecture, Edge Manager facilitates integration into existing third-party management and observability systems. Partners and large systems integrators utilize these flexible APIs to embed Edge Manager capabilities within broader management solutions, enhancing visibility, analytics, and operational efficiency across entire edge infrastructures.

Security and compliance considerations

Edge Manager facilitates responsiveness to critical security and compliance requirements for sensitive edge environments. Its built-in security framework helps you work to safeguard devices deployed in remote or publicly accessible locations, mitigating physical and cyber threats. It supports rigorous regulatory compliance standards, such as PCI DSS compliance for retail or critical infrastructure security mandates.

Explore more by visiting the Edge Manager product page. Contact a Red Hat expert to discuss how Edge Manager can streamline your edge fleet management today.