October 2017

Written by Gorka Garcia and Federico Claramonte from Cavium 

Cavium, a provider of highly integrated semiconductor processors that enable intelligent networking, communications, storage, video and security applications, recently joined EdgeX Foundry and is already an active contributor.

We are using our OCTEON TX family of Multi-Core 64-bit ARM Embedded Processors to target the intelligent IoT Edge Gateway market.  We believe in open source technologies for this market and value EdgeX Foundry for its scalability and flexibility.

Over the past few months, Cavium has helped create a strong ARM64-based version of the EdgeX platform that is on par with the versions for other CPU platforms.  Our particular focus was on ensuring efficient execution of the platform on OCTEON TX processors using a intelligent edge gateway reference design.

As we started the port, the first issue we met was the lack of ARM64 support in EdgeX docker containers. As a first pass, we ran EdgeX without using containers and just calling the micro-services directly. This worked at first try, as the EdgeX software is written in java and it did not use any native libraries. Then, we created a new set of ARM64 containers that can be deployed to ARM64 in the same way as x86. While doing this, we simplified the docker container process creation by implementing some scripts that will handle that task. When running all the containers in our lower memory ARM64 boards, we noticed a peak of memory usage at startup. After some investigation, we managed to reduce these memory peaks by simplifying the startup process, managing to also improve the startup time of EdgeX. These are changes that benefit all supported platforms, not just ARM64. Right now we are involved in the porting of some micro-services from java to Go Lang, which will help reduce memory footprint even further as well as improve the overall performance.

All our work has been contributed to the EdgeX Foundry community as we believe interoperability is key for IoT solutions success and are committed to help grow the EdgeX ecosystem. Throughout this whole process, we had support from the EdgeX community, answering our questions and giving feedback on our work. Cavium will continue supporting the EdgeX Foundry project to make sure it runs well in our ARM64 processors as well as doing generic optimizations of the services that could benefit the whole community.

For more developer resources, please visit the EdgeX Foundry wiki page.

Written by Jim White, EdgeX Foundry TSC Member and  Chair of Core Services Working Group

To begin this post, I need to give you a little history.  When my team and I started on Project Fuse (which became EdgeX Foundry) at Dell some two years ago, we knew the micro service architecture was going to be the mechanism to deliver the edge/IoT platform to satisfy our ideal platform.  What we weren’t sure about was the programming language to use to get started in writing our microservices.  As we looked around at options we knew we needed a very powerful and flexible programming platform that would provide all sorts of tools and connectors to the various protocols of the IoT world.  Many of the newly emerging languages, like Go Lang, just didn’t ring the bell on the availability of tools and connectors at the time.  So, we went with Java as our primarily programming language as it was well known to us, provided all the libraries and connectors we could want, and it seemed to be in line with the other products we wanted to integrate with at the time.  We also knew that the microservice architecture would allow us to add or replace a microservice in the future using a different language if we needed.  To be honest, our project was a proof of concept system so the choice in language was less relevant then than today.

As we fast forward to EdgeX’s introduction this spring, it was clear from the community that while the concept architecture we built with Fuse was on the mark, we needed to eventually improve EdgeX’s performance, footprint, and scalability – especially to meet the mission critical edge use cases we would encounter.  Languages like Go Lang have come a long way, and many of our community members were already seeing incredible improvements using Go Lang in their IoT solutions.  Indeed, even at Dell, as we were getting ready to introduce EdgeX into the open source community, we had started to experiment with Go Lang (and other languages) and had even developed some replacement micro services to demonstrate the potential performance/footprint improvements while also trying to understand the challenges.

Today, I am pleased to announce that the EdgeX community has formalized plans to develop preview EdgeX microservices in Go Lang and make them available by Jan 31, 2018.  This will be a preview of the California release of EdgeX scheduled for the spring of 2018.  We will release these Go Lang services but will not be making any other changes to the system’s functionality or API set – in other words, these Go-based microservices should be drop in replacements to their Java counterparts.  And for the foreseeable future, we plan to support both the Java and Go Lang versions as we know the Java and Go Lang communities are vibrant and may want/need these alternatives in their particular IoT solutions.

Specifically, we plan on releasing the following microservices in early 2018 as part of this preview release:

• Core Data, Core Metadata, Core Command microservices
• Export Client microservice
• Initial elements/libraries to a Go Lang Device Service SDK

Additional microservices and facilities may be added to this list depending on work accomplished between now and then.  Much of this work is actually already underway – in parallel to our efforts as a community to get the Barcelona release out this fall.  We hope to have some preliminary performance and footprint numbers (in comparison to the existing Java microservices) so people will have an understanding of the impact of this work by the time we showcase the Barcelona release in the fall.

We are hopeful this work will also help demonstrate the community’s commitment to drive down the size and speed of EdgeX to meet today’s edge platforms.  Much work remains, but this will help provide proof positive that the platform is heading in the right direction and will help galvanize the community around our desire to solve real world IoT/edge use cases.

By the way, don’t let this work suggest that EdgeX is going to use Go as the only development language going forward.  One of the core tenets of EdgeX is to be polyglot and use the tools of choice for each microservice to best meet the use case need.  As an example, others in our community are already on record (IoTech, Inc. for example) in their desire and focus to eventually develop a C based device service and device service SDK.  C/C++ will probably make a lot of sense when trying to operate a device service on very constrained device hardware and offers extreme performance improvements.  Go simply offers a popular alternative to Java that is seeing wide use in the IoT community and helps us get the collective footprint and performance of EdgeX down fairly quickly.

So, do you like to work in Go?  Lend us a hand!  Come join us in the EdgeX community as we try to build the best open source IoT/edge platform on the planet!

Written by Jim White, EdgeX Foundry TSC Member and  Chair of Core Services Working Group

The EdgeX Foundry community continues to grow as does the EdgeX functionality thanks to contributions from around the world.  In this post, I’d like to highlight an exciting addition to the EdgeX “northbound” interface.  That is, a new capability built into the EdgeX export services that allows EdgeX data to be sent to Google Cloud IoT Core.

What is Google IoT Core?  It’s a Google public beta cloud service (what Google calls a fully managed service) that allows you to easily and securely connect, manage, and ingest data from millions of globally dispersed devices.  See https://cloud.google.com/iot-core/ for more details.

For those unfamiliar with the EdgeX architecture, the services responsible for organizing, formatting, transforming, etc. the sensor data collected by EdgeX and sending it to enterprise or cloud based systems are the export services.  In the EdgeX and IoT communities, we often call theses the “northbound” services or interfaces as they are typically depicted on the top end of any diagram that depicts an edge platform.  “Southside” services or interfaces are those that communicate with sensors, devices or other systems even closer to the “things” edge and are usually depicted at the bottom of any diagram.

Bernard Van Haecke from Schlumberger, Menlo Park, CA office dug into EdgeX when it was released and recently had his connector contribution approved and posted as part of the Export services.  What his addition does is allow the export services to pipe data to Google IoT Core.

EdgeX export services already allowed for sending data to any MQTT topic or HTTP REST endpoint generically and to Azure IoT Hub specifically.  We believe going forward, there will be lots of these connectors – some public and some private (perhaps you will need one to your own closed enterprise system).  But Bernard will always have the distinction of being our first new connector on the northside.  Thanks Bernard!

You can learn more about the Google IoT Core export on the EdgeX Wiki here: https://wiki.edgexfoundry.org/display/FA/Export+Services+-+Google+IoT+Core

This week, EdgeX Foundry will be on display at IoT Solutions World Congress taking place in Barcelona, Spain, from Oct. 3-5, 2017.

The EdgeX Foundry booth (Booth E541) will be filled with innovative member solutions from Canonical, CloudPlugs, Cumulocity, Dell/RSA, ForgeRock, IOTech, Linaro, NetFoundry, Neustar, RFMicron, Vantiq and VMware. Other EdgeX Foundry members will also have EdgeX on display in their own booths, including Analog Devices, Bayshore Networks, Device Authority, EnOcean Alliance, FogHorn and Opto 22.

If you’re in Barcelona, stop by Booth E541 to see the live demonstrations, chat with members and learn more about the EdgeX ecosystem. There will also be a happy hour from 3-5 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, so stop by for drinks and light snacks!

Demos in the EdgeX Foundry Booth (Booth E541):

Canonical: Canonical will show how Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core, the Operating System of Choice for smart IoT, can be used as the IoT gateway Operating System to run EdgeX on.

CloudPlugs: CloudPlugs will be displaying the Edge One™ IIoT Gateway on Dell Edge Gateway 3000 controlling Modbus devices and integrated with EdgeX. CloudPlugs is an advanced IIoT platform that uses fog computing to easily develop, deploy and manage industrial devices and applications.

Cumulocity: Cumulocity IoT scales up to geo-distributed multi-tiered cloud and on-premises high availability hybrids and down to a single node fully featured Edge platform – all with the same secure carrier grade software architecture. Cumulocity will be showcasing the Edge platform and a range of connected devices for consumer, industrial and environmental use cases. Cumulocity IoT rapidly accelerates IoT adoption.

Dell: The Dell demo will use the EdgeX platform to manage 3 devices – a people counting camera, thermostat with heat/cool fans, and Patlite signal tower running on a Dell Edge Gateway 5000 and 3000. Through EdgeX, the people counter will actuate (through EdgeX rules engine) the thermostat and fans based on the number of people it detects.

RSA: Highlighting monitoring and threat intelligence for the edge (i.e. the gateway and attached devices), this demo consists of an RSA agent that runs on gateway and monitors, collects, and sends information to hosted cloud service for security evaluation/action. Dell Technologies offers the industry’s broadest IoT infrastructure portfolio including Dell gateways and RSA security, enhanced by curated partnerships and the EdgeX Foundry ecosystem.

ForgeRock: ForgeRock will be using EdgeX and the Identity Edge Controller (IEC) to demonstrate the integration on a Dell Gateway 5000. The IEC demo will deliver the following inbound services – attestation, auto onboarding at boot, authorization and token validation. ForgeRock® Edge Security offers complete end-to-end security for IoT deployments. It ensures the integrity of IoT devices and their communication using secure, standards-based tokens instead of insecure hard coded usernames and passwords, or managing thousands of individual PKI certificates. It adds a rock-solid security layer to IoT hardware used at the edge, including leveraging highly secure on-chip Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) if available, and comprehensive, policy based controls for publishing and subscribing to data streams from edge devices, making it as easy to protect data coming from IoT devices as it is to protect a web page.

IOTech: IOTech will be showcasing the new GUI they have developed to support EdgeX.  The demo will showcase how the GUI can be used to browse device and device service related information, as well as being able to visualize device generated data. IOTech is a vendor neutral middleware specialist aiming to be at the heart of the edge infrastructure opportunity by leveraging EdgeX technology to accelerate solution time-to-market and leveraging the partner ecosystem of key IoT players to facilitate a global market opportunity for the company.

Linaro: The demo will feature sensor data communication from the Zephyr microPlatform into an Edge X gateway. It also demonstrates a newly available feature in the Zephyr microPlatform, LWM2M. The Zephyr microPlatform is a minimal, secure, and OTA-enabled platform for product development that is continuously updated for the life of the product by Open Source Foundries.

NetFoundry: NetFoundry will be showing two demos. Demo 1 uses the NetFoundry we console to spin up a network to show superior application performance and security across any network, including the public internet. Demo 2 highlights NetFoundry enforcing the Neustar Trusted Device Identity (TDI) security and performance requirements from edge-to-cloud. NetFoundry enables customers to quickly and easily spin up highly-secure, performant app-specific networks at scale.

Neustar: Neustar will be showcasing two use cases of Trusted Device Identity. The first use will be demonstrating a secure firmware update to an endpoint using an edge gateway to validate payload and confirm source. The second demo will be demonstrating secure end point to app path protection over a core network and terminating in two end points (an app and a sensor). This use case will a show immediate revocation and resilience to man in the middle attacks. IoT solutions need to scale securely beyond the traditional PKI implementations. Neustar is launching Trusted Device Identity (TDI), a unique, scalable, and real-time approach, providing the means to securely communicate to and from end points with immediate revocation capability.

RFMicron: RFMicron is helping to extend EdgeX into the realm of real-world data with Smart Passive Sensing™ devices. These battery-free and maintenance-free wireless sensors can be applied in a wide variety of industrial, automotive and medical applications. The demo showcases the RfmApi software that employs edge processing to convert raw sensor data into trusted information. RFMicron helps protect people and equipment in real-time with new industrial IoT software connecting smart passive sensors into the powerful EdgeX backbone. The latest RFMicron sensors support full AES-128 encryption for secure commands and data transfers in wireless mode for blockchain applications. RFMicron helps protect people and equipment with new industrial IoT software connecting smart passive sensors into the powerful EdgeX backbone.

VANTIQ: VANTIQ’s open platform integrates with a wide range of systems and we are excited about furthering our association and integration with the EdgeX Foundry community. VANTIQ provides the only application platform-as-a-service that enables the rapid development of real-time, event-driven applications.

VMware: In partnership with SAP, VMware will be demoing the Smart Popcorn Machine which pops popcorn and monitors the temperature, pressure, etc. of the machine. The data is pushed up to the SAP Cloud and to VMware’s new IoT Pulse Center which manages, monitors, secures, and onboards the sensors within the Popcorn Machine. The demo does not currently integrate with EdgeX live but will be in the future and the value proposition will be talked about. VMware Pulse IoT Center is a secure, enterprise grade, end to end IoT infrastructure management solution that allows IT and OT to have complete control of their IoT use case, from the edge to the cloud by helping them manage broader, operate smarter, innovate faster and protect better.

If you want to see more EdgeX Foundry in action, you can visit other member booths including:

Analog Devices: Booth D485

Bayshore Networks: Booth B211

Device Authority (Booth B240): Device Authority is the leading provider of IoT IAM. Our KeyScaler™ platform provides trust for IoT devices and the IoT ecosystem, to address the challenges of securing the Internet of Things.

EnOcean Alliance (Booth B254): EdgeX is a crucial part for EnOcean based gateways which bring sensor data, provided by self-powered and wireless sensor solutions, to the cloud and thus enabling cognitive buildings. At the stand, we will demonstrate EnOcean based self-powered wireless solutions, enabling highly flexible, maintenance-free applications for the Internet of Things and supporting the transition from intelligent to cognitive buildings.

FogHorn: Booth E571/B211

Opto 22 (Booth B286): Dell Edge Gateway 5000 with EdgeX collecting and controlling operational data on a working model wind turbine. Real-time data can be accessed through EdgeX Console at public URL http://optoturbine.groov.com:4000 admin/123. Opto 22 manufacturers industrial controllers, I/O, and edge computing devices bridging the physical and digital worlds for IIoT.

Striim (Booth B221): The demo is real time predictive maintenance and predictive quality for manufacturing.

In the Industrial Internet Consortium booth (Booth E571), you can also catch Sensify Security’s demo that showcases completing porting their blockchain-based IAM system to the EdgeX platform.

If you’re not in Barcelona, stay tuned on @EdgeXFoundry for pictures and the new EdgeX Foundry Youtube channel for videos!