Understanding Microsoft Azure IoT Edge

So, what exactly is Microsoft Azure IoT Edge? How does it differ from the other edge analytics applications we have discussed up till now? We can understand Azure IoT Edge a little bit better if we view Azure IoT Hub as if it were a typical remote server, and the installation of Azure IoT Edge on a physical edge device as if it were an edge computing platform. More precisely, though, Azure IoT Edge is a form of distributed computing whereby Azure modules are copied to the physical edge device, as illustrated in the following diagram:

In the preceding diagram, we can see that Azure IoT is remote-based and the Azure IoT Edge installation is a locally based node. The devices (which are similar to the sensors and actuators mentioned in the previous section) are locally based as well and take advantage of having a node version of Azure IoT in the form of Azure IoT Edge. So, in other words, Azure IoT Edge brings the advantages of edge computing to Azure-based IoT applications. We will revisit and go into more detail about this diagram in Chapter 2, How Does IoT Edge Analytics work?.