Leaner, Smarter, and Ready for the Future
Author: James Butcher, IOTech Product Manager & EdgeX Foundry Chairman
EdgeX 4.0 "Odesa" marks a significant step forward for the EdgeX Foundry community. Alongside key feature enhancements, this release brings measurable improvements in memory efficiency and deployment flexibility. The newly published 4.0 performance report highlights the real-world impact of the latest architectural changes, offering developers and integrators a clear view of what’s changed — and why it matters.
At IOTech, we're proud not only to contribute to the EdgeX community but also to offer Edge Central, a commercially supported platform built on EdgeX, which incorporates these latest innovations and delivers them as a hardened, enterprise-ready product.
What’s New in EdgeX 4.0?
As a reminder, EdgeX 4.0 - released in March this year - introduced several foundational updates:
- PostgreSQL replaced Redis as the default database, delivering more robust persistence capabilities.
- Core Keeper replaced Consul, providing a lightweight configuration service.
- OpenBao replaced Vault as the default secret store, aligning with the project's focus on open-source maintainability
- A new Time-Based Scheduling Service, for more precise control of edge operations.
- A new Python API, to broaden accessibility to a wider community.
These changes are all aligned with the community’s goal of providing and maintaining a modular, production-ready edge platform. Read my full 4.0 release blog for more details.
If you're looking for a fully QA tested and commercially supported version of this cutting edge technology, Edge Central already includes these upgrades — along with key features such as advanced tooling, enterprise integration capabilities, and edge management.
Key Performance Highlight
The EdgeX community gathers detailed performance metrics for each release. Given the microservices nature of the platform, users can choose exactly which services to deploy. For analysis, the community benchmarks two deployment modes of the platform:
- Full/Typical Deployment: most services, including security, are enabled.
- Minimal Deployment: streamlined for resource-constrained environments.
In a nutshell, here’s how EdgeX 4.0 compares to the previous 3.1 (Napa) release:
Full (Typical) Deployment
- Runtime memory usage reduced by 38% (from 335 MB to 206 MB).
- Docker image footprint reduced by ~10%, now ~996 MB.
- Startup time increased slightly with full security (from 38s to 40s).
Minimal Deployment
- Startup time improved (17s from 22s).
- CPU and memory usage increased slightly (71 MB from 38 MB) – attributed mainly due to PostgreSQL’s larger baseline footprint.
Latency
- API response times with the API gateway rose marginally (from ~31ms to ~37ms).
- Response times without security improved slightly (from ~2.4ms to ~2ms).
- Data latency tested with the virtual device remains stable (around ~4–6ms), with no measurable overhead from security.
All stats relate to testing performed on a Dell 3200 Edge Gateway.
What Does This Mean?
The 4.0 metrics confirm that EdgeX remains a lightweight and efficient platform for edge computing. While PostgreSQL and OpenBao bring a larger footprint to minimal setups, they offer enhanced compatibility, durability, and manageability for enterprise-scale use cases.
Overall, EdgeX is evolving into a more robust, secure, and modern framework while maintaining its edge-friendly characteristics — particularly when carefully selecting services to match deployment constraints.
For those seeking to minimize integration time or add enterprise features, Edge Central offers a fully supported version of EdgeX — optimized for production and backed by our expert team.
From Open Source to Enterprise-Grade
While EdgeX remains a powerful open-source option, many adopters prefer a commercial implementation that reduces operational risk and speeds time to value. The microservice architecture of EdgeX makes it ideal for vendors to extend or enhance as needed.
Edge Central, built on EdgeX, leverages this flexibility — adding hardened security options, and integrations with common industrial protocols and cloud services. It's an ideal choice for businesses looking to scale fast without compromising on performance or control.
Get the Full Report
Access the full EdgeX 4.0 performance report on the EdgeX Wiki. Whether you're optimizing for a minimal footprint or scaling to full-featured industrial edge deployments, the latest data provides essential insights to guide your strategy.
And if you're ready to move from experimentation to execution, Edge Central offers a proven foundation — with all the benefits of open source, delivered as a reliable commercial solution.And if you're ready to move from experimentation to execution, Edge Central offers a proven foundation — with all the benefits of open source, delivered as a reliable commercial solution.