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LF Edge Member Spotlight: Zenlayer

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog, LF Edge, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community comprises a diverse set of member companies and people that represent the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco Edge. The Member Spotlight blog series highlights these members and how they are contributing to and leveraging open source edge solutions. Today, we sit down with Jim Xu, Principal Engineer at Zenlayer, to discuss the importance of open source, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, their contributions to Akraino and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

Zenlayer is an edge cloud service provider and global company headquartered in Los Angeles, Shanghai, Singapore, and Mumbai. Businesses utilize Zenlayer’s platform to deploy applications closer to the users and improve their digital experience. Zenlayer offers edge compute, software defined networking, and application delivery services in more than 180 locations on six continents.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

Zenlayer has always relied on open source solutions. We strongly believe that open source is the right ecosystem for the edge cloud industry to grow. We connect infrastructure all over the globe. If each data center and platform integrate open-source software, it is much easier to integrate networks and make literal connections compared to a milieu of proprietary systems. Some of the open source projects we benefit from and support are Akraino Blue Prints, ODL, Kubernetes, OpenNess, DPDK, Linux, mySQL, and more.

Why did you join LF Edge and what sort of impact do you think LF Edge has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?

We are a startup company in the edge cloud industry. LF Edge is one of the best open-source organizations both advocating for and building open edge platforms. The edge cloud space is developing rapidly, with continuous improvements in cloud technology, edge infrastructure, disaggregated compute, and storage options. Both impact and complexity go far beyond just cloud service providers, device vendors, or even a single traditional industry. LF Edge has helped build a community of people and companies from across industries, advocating for an open climate to make the edge accessible to as many users as possible.

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the LF Edge community?

Our company has been a member of the LF Edge community for over a year now. Despite the difficulties presented by COVID-19, we have been able to enjoy being part of the Edge community. We interacted with people from a broad spectrum of industries and technology areas and learned some exciting use cases from the LF Edge community. This has helped us build a solid foundation for Zenlayer’s edge cloud services. 

What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through LF Edge participation?

We are proud to be part of the Edge Cloud community. Zenlayer is leading the Upstream subcommittee within Akraino and has invited multiple external communities such as ONF CORD,  CNTT, TIP OCN, O-RAN and TARS to share our common interest in building the edge. We also contributed to the upstream requirement and reviews for Akraino releases.

What do you think sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?

LF Edge has a clear focus on edge cloud and a very healthy and strong governing board to ensure unbiased technological drive toward open systems. 

How will LF Edge help your business?

We hope LF Edge will continue to empower rapid customer innovation during the drive to edge cloud for video streaming, gaming, enterprise applications, IoT, and more. As a member of a fast-growing community, we also look forward to more interactions via conferences and social events (digital or in person as is safe) so we can continue to get to know and better understand each other’s needs and how we can help solve them. 

What advice would you give to someone considering joining LF Edge?

LF Edge is a unique community pushing for the best future for edge cloud. The group brings together driven people, a collaborative culture, and fast momentum. What you put in you receive back tenfold. Anyone interested in the future of the edge should consider joining, even if they do not yet know much about open source and its benefits. The community will value their inputs and be happy to teach or collaborate in return.

To find out more about LF Edge members or how to join, click here. To learn more about Akraino, click here. Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the  LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #community or #akraino-tsc channels.

October 28, 2020

Akraino White Paper: Cloud Interfacing at the Telco 5G Edge

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog

Written by Aaron Williams, LF Edge Developer Advocate

As cloud computing migrates from large Centralized Data Centers to the Server Provider Edge’s Access Edge (i.e. Server-based devices at the Telco tower) to be closer to the end user and reduce latency, more applications and use cases are now available.  When you combine this with the widespread roll out of 5G, with its speed, the last mile instantly becomes insanely fast.  Yet, if this new edge stack is not constructed correctly, the promise of these technologies will not be possible.

LF Edge’s Akraino project has dug into these issues and created its second white paper called Cloud Interfacing at the Telco 5G Edge.  In this just released white paper, Akraino analyzes the issues, proposes detailed enabler layers between edge applications and 5G core networks, and makes recommendations for how Telcos can overcome these technical and business challenges as they bring the next generation of applications and services to life.

Click here to view the complete white paper: https://bit.ly/34yCjWW

To learn more about Akraino, blueprints or end user case stories, please visit the wiki: https://wiki.akraino.org.

October 7, 2020

On the “Edge” of Something Great

By Akraino, Announcement, Baetyl, Blog, EdgeX Foundry, Fledge, Home Edge, LF Edge, Open Horizon, Project EVE, Secure Device Onboard, State of the Edge

As we kick off Open Networking and Edge Summit today, we are celebrating the edge by sharing the results of our first-ever LF Edge Member Survey and insight into what our focuses are next year.

LF Edge, which will celebrate its 2nd birthday in January 2021, sent the survey to our more than 75 member companies and liaisons. The survey featured about 15 questions that collected details about open source and edge computing, how members of the LF Edge community are using edge computing and what project resources are most valuable. 

Why did you chose to participate in LF Edge?

The Results Are In

The Top 3 reasons to participate in LF Edge are market creation and adoption acceleration, collaboration with peers and industry influence. 

  • More than 71% joined LF Edge for market creation and adoption acceleration
  • More than 57% indicated they joined LF Edge for business development
  • More than 62% have either deployed products or services based on LF Edge Projects or they are planned by for later this year, next year or within the next 3-5 years

Have you deployed products or services based on LF Edge Projects?

This feedback corresponds with what we’re seeing in some of the LF Edge projects. For example, our Stage 3 Projects Akraino and EdgeX Foundry are already being deployed. Earlier this summer, Akraino launched its Release 3 (R3) that delivers a fully functional open source edge stack that enables a diversity of edge platforms across the globe. With R3, Akraino brings deployments and PoCs from a swath of global organizations including Aarna Networks, China Mobile, Equinix, Futurewei, Huawei, Intel, Juniper, Nokia, NVIDIA, Tencent, WeBank, WiPro, and more. 

Additionally, EdgeX Foundry has hit more than 7 million container downloads last month and a global ecosystem of complementary products and services that continues to increase. As a result, EdgeX Foundry is seeing more end-user case studies from big companies like Accenture, ThunderSoft and Jiangxing Intelligence. 

Have you gained insight into end user requirements through open collaboration?


Collaboration with peers

The edge today is a solution-specific story. Equipment and architectures are purpose-built for specific use cases, such as 5G and network function virtualization, next-generation CDNs and cloud, and streaming games. Which is why collaboration is key and more than 70% of respondents said they joined LF Edge to collaborate with peers. Here are a few activities at ONES that showcase the cross-project and members collaboration. 

Additionally, LF Edge created a LF Edge Vertical Solutions Group that is working to enable easily-customized deployments based on market/vertical requirements. In fact, we are hosting an LF Edge End User Community Event on October 1 that provides a platform for discussing the utilization of LF Edge Projects in real-world applications. The goal of these sessions is to educate the LF Edge community (both new and existing) to make sure we appropriately tailor the output of our project collaborations to meet end user needs. Learn more.

Industry Influence

More than 85% of members indicated they have gained insights into end user requirements through open collaboration. A common definition of the edge is gaining momentum. Community efforts such as LF Edge and State of the Edge’s assets, the Open Glossary of Edge Computing, and the Edge Computing Landscape are providing cohesion and unifying the industry. In fact,  LF Edge members in all nine of the projects collaborated to create an industry roadmap that is being supported by global tech giants and start-ups alike.

 

 

Where do we go from here? 

When asked, LF Edge members didn’t hold back. They want more. They want to see more of everything – cross-project collaboration, end user events and communication, use cases, open source collaboration with other liaisons. As we head into 2021, LF Edge will continue to lay the groundwork for markets like cloud native, 5G, and edge for  more open deployments and collaboration.  

 

September 29, 2020

Where the Edges Meet: Public Cloud Edge Interface

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog

Written by Oleg Berzin, Ph.D., a member of the Akraino Technical Steering Committee and Senior Director Technology Innovation at Equinix

Introduction

Why 5G

5G will provide significantly higher throughput than existing 4G networks. Currently, 4G LTE is limited to around 150 Mbps. LTE Advanced increases the data rate to 300 Mbps and LTE Advanced Pro to 600Mbps-1 Gbps. The 5G downlink speeds can be up to 20 Gbps. 5G can use multiple spectrum options, including low band (sub 1 GHz), mid-band (1-6 GHz) and mmWave (28, 39 GHz). The mmWave spectrum has the largest available contiguous bandwidth capacity (~1000 MHz) and promises dramatic increases in user data rates. 5G enables advanced air interface formats and transmission scheduling procedures that decrease access latency in the Radio Access Network by a factor of 10 compared to 4G LTE.

The Slicing Must Go On

Among advanced properties of the 5G architecture, Network Slicing enables the use of 5G network and services for a wide variety of use cases on the same infrastructure. Network Slicing (NS) refers to the ability to provision a common physical system to provide resources necessary for delivering service functionality under specific performance (e.g. latency, throughput, capacity, reliability) and functional (e.g. security, applications/services) constraints.

Network Slicing is particularly relevant to the subject matter of the Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) Blueprint. As shown in the figure below, there is a reasonable expectation that applications enabled by the 5G performance characteristics will need access to diverse resources. This includes conventional traffic flows, such as access from mobile devices to the core clouds (public and/or private) as well as the general access to the Internet, edge traffic flows, such as low latency/high speed access to edge compute workloads placed in close physical proximity to the User Plane Functions (UPF), as well as the hybrid traffic flows that require a combination of the above for distributed applications (e.g. online gaming, AI at the edge, etc). One point that is very important is that the network slices provisioned in the mobile network must extend beyond the N6/SGi interface of the UPF all the way to the workloads running on the edge computing hardware and on the Public/Private Cloud infrastructure. In other words, “The Slicing Must Go On” in order to ensure continuity of intended performance for the applications.


The Mobile Edge

The technological capabilities defined by the standards organizations (e.g. 3GPP, IETF) are the necessary conditions for the development of 5G. However, the standards and protocols are not sufficient on their own. The realization of the promises of 5G depends directly on the availability of the supporting physical infrastructure as well as the ability to instantiate services in the right places within the infrastructure.

Latency can be used as a very good example to illustrate this point. One of the most intriguing possibilities with 5G is the ability to deliver very low end to end latency. A common example is the 5ms round-trip device to application latency target. If we look closely at this latency budget, it is not hard to see that to achieve this goal a new physical aggregation infrastructure is needed. This is because the 5ms budget includes all radio/mobile core, transport and processing delays on the path between the application running on User Equipment (UE) and the application running on the compute/server side. Given that at least 2ms will be required for the “air interface”, the remaining 3ms is all that’s left for the radio/packet core processing, network transport and the compute/application processing budget. The figure below illustrates an example of the end-to-end latency budget in a 5G network.

The Edge-in and Cloud-out Effect

Public Cloud Service Providers and 3rd-Party Edge Compute (EC) Providers are deploying Edge instances to better serve their end-users and applications, A multitude of these applications require close inter-working with the Mobile Edge deployments to provide predictable latency, throughput, reliability, and other requirements.

The need to interface and exchange information through open APIs will allow competitive offerings for Consumers, Enterprises, and Vertical Industry end-user segments. These APIs are not limited to providing basic connectivity services but will include the ability to deliver predictable data rates, predictable latency, reliability, service insertion, security, AI and RAN analytics, network slicing, and more.

These capabilities are needed to support a multitude of emerging applications such as AR/VR, Industrial IoT, autonomous vehicles, drones, Industry 4.0 initiatives, Smart Cities, Smart Ports. Other APIs will include exposure to edge orchestration and management, Edge monitoring (KPIs), and more. These open APIs will be the foundation for service and instrumentation capabilities when integrating with public cloud development environments.

Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI)

Overview

The purpose of Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) Blueprint family is to specify a set of open APIs for enabling Multi-Domain Inter-working across functional domains that provide Edge capabilities/applications and require close cooperation between the Mobile Edge, the Public Cloud Core and Edge, the 3rd-Party Edge functions as well as the underlying infrastructure such as Data Centers, Compute hardware and Networks. The Compute hardware is optimized and power efficient for Edge such as the Arm64 architecture.

The high-level relationships between the functional domains are shown in the figure below:

The Data Center Facility (DCF) Domain. The DCF Domain includes Data Center physical facilities that provide the physical location and the power/space infrastructure for other domains and their respective functions.

The Interconnection of Core and Edge (ICE) Domain. The ICE Domain includes the physical and logical interconnection and networking capabilities that provide connectivity between other domains and their respective functions.

The Mobile Network Operator (MNO) Domain. The MNO Domain contains all Access and Core Network Functions necessary for signaling and user plane capabilities to allow for mobile device connectivity.

The Public Cloud Core (PCC) Domain. The PCC Domain includes all IaaS/PaaS functions that are provided by the Public Clouds to their customers.

The Public Cloud Edge (PCE) Domain. The PCE Domain includes the PCC Domain functions that are instantiated in the DCF Domain locations that are positioned closer (in terms of geographical proximity) to the functions of the MNO Domain.

The 3rd party Edge (3PE) Domain. The 3PE domain is in principle similar to the PCE Domain, with a distinction that the 3PE functions may be provided by 3rd parties (with respect to the MNOs and Public Clouds) as instances of Edge Computing resources/applications.

Architecture

The PCEI Reference Architecture and the Interface Reference Points (IRP) are shown in the figure below. For the full description of the PCEI Reference Architecture please refer to the PCEI Architecture Document.

Use Cases

The PCEI working group identified the following use cases and capabilities for Blueprint development:

  1. Traffic Steering/UPF Distribution/Shunting capability — distributing User Plane Functions in the appropriate Data Center Facilities on qualified compute hardware for routing the traffic to desired applications and network/processing functions/applications.
  2. Local Break-Out (LBO) – Examples: video traffic offload, low latency services, roaming optimization.
  3. Location Services — location of a specific UE, or identification of UEs within a geographical area, facilitation of server-side application workload distribution based on UE and infrastructure resource location.
  4. QoS acceleration/extension – provide low latency, high throughput for Edge applications. Example: provide continuity for QoS provisioned for subscribers in the MNO domain, across the interconnection/networking domain for end-to-end QoS functionality.
  5. Network Slicing provisioning and management – providing continuity for network slices instantiated in the MNO domain, across the Public Cloud Core/Edge as well as the 3Rd-Party Edge domains, offering dedicated resources specifically tailored for application and functional needs (e.g. security) needs.
  6. Mobile Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Access – provide multi-MNO, multi-Cloud, multi-MEC access for mobile devices (including IoT) and Edge services/applications
  7. Enterprise Wireless WAN access – provide high-speed Fixed Wireless Access to enterprises with the ability to interconnect to Public Cloud and 3rd-Party Edge Functions, including the Network Functions such as SD-WAN.
  8. Distributed Online/Cloud Gaming.
  9. Authentication – provided as service enablement (e.g., two-factor authentication) used by most OTT service providers 
  10. Security – provided as service enablement (e.g., firewall service insertion)

The initial focus of the PCEI Blueprint development will be on the following use cases:

  • User Plane Function Distribution
  • Local Break-Out of Mobile Traffic
  • Location Services

User Plane Function Distribution and Local Break-Out

The UPF Distribution use case distinguishes between two scenarios:

  • UPF Interconnection. The UPF/SPGW-U is located in the MNO network and needs to be interconnected on the N6/SGi interface to 3PE and/or PCE/PCC.
  • UPF Placement. The MNO wants to instantiate a UPF/SPGW-U in a location that is different from their network (e.g. Customer Premises, 3rd Party Data Center)

UPF Interconnection Scenario

UPF Placement Scenario

UPF Placement, Interconnection and Local Break-Out Examples

Location Services (LS)

This use case targets obtaining geographic location of a specific UE provided by the 4G/5G network, identification of UEs within a geographical area as well as facilitation of server-side application workload distribution based on UE and infrastructure resource location.

 

Acknowledgements

Project Technical Lead: Oleg Berzin

Committers: Suzy GuTina Tsou Wei Chen, Changming Bai, Alibaba; Jian Li, Kandan Kathirvel, Dan Druta, Gao Chen, Deepak Kataria, David Plunkett, Cindy Xing

Contributors: Arif , Jane Shen, Jeff Brower, Suresh Krishnan, Kaloom, Frank Wang, Ampere

September 17, 2020

LF Edge Member Spotlight: HPE

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog, Member Spotlight

The LF Edge community is represents a diverse set of member companies and people that represent the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco Edge. The Member Spotlight blog series highlights these members and how they are contributing to and leveraging open source edge solutions. Today, we sat down with Rohit Arora, Enterprise Architect at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to discuss the importance of open source, leading Multi Access Edge Computing (MEC) initiatives, participating in the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and collaborating with the LF Edge ecosystem.

Can you tell us a little about your organization?

HPE is a global, edge-to-cloud Platform-as-a-Service company. HPE solutions connect, protect, analyze, and act on data and applications wherever they live, from edge to cloud, so insights can be turned into outcomes at the speed required to thrive in today’s complex world.

Why is your organization adopting an open source approach?

We at HPE believe in innovation and open source encourages innovation by bringing communities together to build common platform. HPE has been involved in various open source projects.

Why did you join LF Edge and what sort of impact do you think LF Edge has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?

We joined LF edge because it aligns with HPE’s direction of edge to cloud. Edge computing is creating a major transformation in most industries and we believe initiatives driven by LF edge are critical for this digital transformation

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the LF Edge community?

There are many benefits of being part of LF edge but we believe the biggest is to be part of a community which is driving the innovation for the next gen networks at the edge.

What sort of contributions has your team made to the community, ecosystem through LF Edge participation?

HPE has contributions on the LF Edge Governing Board and TAC, HPE has also made some contributions to the infrastructure requirements for LF Edge. HPE is also actively involved in LF edge projects such as Akraino and process adoption.

What do you think sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?

There are two main reasons LF Edge is different from other industry alliances

  1. A wide set of different community members: There is a wide variety of community members in LF edge from telco services providers, NEPs to chip manufacturers. This provides different viewpoints and provides the right level of expertise that is needed.
  2. Projects execution: The community really believes in executing and we have seen some projects coming from idea to development and then testing at a very fast pace.

How will  LF Edge help your business?

HPE is leading infrastructure provider and have wide variety of solutions for the edge. We are also leading MEC (Multi Access Edge Computing) initiatives with some major telcos. By being part of LFEdge we get access to latest innovations and resources in edge computing. This can help us build our solution to fit industry needs.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining LF Edge?

There are so many projects LF Edge is driving, the best place to start would be to pick a project which aligns with your company’s directions and see how you can drive innovation with your contributions for the project. There are many resources available and all the community members are very helpful to provide any info you need.

To find out more about LF Edge members or how to join, click here.

Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the  LF Edge Slack to share your thoughts and engage with community members. 

 

August 27, 2020

Akraino’s AI Edge-School/Education Video Security Monitoring Blueprint

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog, Use Cases

Written by Hechun Zhang, Staff Systems Engineer, Baidu; Akraino TSC member, and PTL of the AI Edge Blueprint; and Tina Tsou, Enterprise Architect, Arm and Akraino TSC Co-Chair

In order to support end-to-end edge solutions from the Akraino community, Akraino uses blueprint concepts to address specific Edge use cases. A Blueprint is a declarative configuration of the entire stack i.e., edge platform that can support edge workloads and edge APIs. In order to address specific use cases, a reference architecture is developed by the community.

The School/Education Video Security Monitoring Blueprint belongs to the AI Edge Blueprint family. It focuses on establishing an open source MEC platform that combined with AI capacities at the Edge. In this blueprint, latest technologies and frameworks like micro-service framework, Kata container, 5G accelerating, and open API have been integrated to build a industry-leading edge cloud architecture that could provide comprehensive computing acceleration support at the edge. And with this MEC platform, Baidu has expanded AI implementation across products and services to improve safety and engagement in places such as factories, industrial parks, catering services, and classrooms that rely on AI-assisted surveillance.

Value Proposition

  • Establish an open-source edge infrastructure on which each member company can develop its own AI applications, e.g. video security monitoring.
  • Contribute use cases which help customers adopt video security monitoring, AI city, 5G V2X, and Industrial Internet applications.
  • Collaborate with members who can work together to figure out the next big thing for the industry.

Use cases

Improved Student-Teacher Engagement

 

Using deep learning model training for video data from classrooms, school management can evaluate class engagement and analyze individual student concentration levels to improve real-time teaching situations.

Enhanced Factory Safety and Protection

Real-time monitoring helps detecting factory workers who might forget security gadgets, such as helmets, safety gloves, and so on, to prevent hazardous accidents in the workplace. Companies can monitor safety in a comprehensive and timely way, and used findings as a reference for strengthening safety management.

Reinforced Hygiene and Safety in Catering

Through monitoring staff behavior in the kitchen, such as smoking breaks and cell phone use, this solution ensures the safety and hygiene of the food production process.

Advanced Fire Detection and Prevention

Linked and networked smoke detectors in densely populated places, such as industrial parks and community properties, can help quickly detect and alert authorities to fire hazards and accidents.

Network Architecture

OTE-Stack is an edge computing platform for 5G and AI. By virtualization it can shield heterogeneous characteristics and gives a unified access of cloud edge, mobile edge and private edge. For AI it provides low-latency, high-reliability and cost-optimal computing support at the edge through the cluster management and intelligent scheduling of multi-tier clusters. And at the same time OTE-Stack makes device-edge-cloud collaborative computing possible.

Baidu implemented video security monitoring blueprints on the Arm infrastructure, including cloud-edge servers, hardware accelerators, and custom CPUs designed for world-class performance. Arm and Baidu are members of the Akraino project and use edge cloud reference stack of networking platforms and cloud-edge servers built on Arm Neoverse. The Arm Neoverse architecture supports a vast ecosystem of cloud-native applications and combines AI Edge blueprint for an open source mobile edge computing (MEC) platform optimized for sectors such as safety, security, and surveillance.

“Open source has now become one of the most important culture and strategies respected by global IT and Internet industries. As one of the world’s top Internet companies, Baidu has always maintained an enthusiastic attitude in open source, actively contributing the cutting edge products and technologies to the Linux foundation. Looking towards the future, Baidu will continue to adhere to the core strategy of open source and cooperate with partners to build a more open and improved ecosystem.” — Ning Liu, Director of AI Cloud Group, Baidu

In the 5G era, OTE-Stack has obvious advantages in the field of edge computing:

  • Large scale and hierarchical cluster management
  • Support third cluster
  • Lightweight cluster controller
  • Cluster autonomy
  • Automatic disaster recovery
  • Global scheduling
  • Support multi-runtimes
  • Kubernetes native support

For more information about this Akraino Blueprint, click here.  For general information about Akraino Blueprints, click here.

August 20, 2020

MicroMEC now available with the Akraino R3 Release!

By Akraino, Akraino Edge Stack, Blog

Written by Tapio Tallgren, Technical Leader at Nokia Mobile Networks, Community Sub-Committee Chair of Akraino TSC,Ferenc Szekely, Program Manager, SUSE, Committer of Micro MEC blueprint of Akraino TSC and Tina Tsou, Enterprise Architect, Arm, Akraino TSC Co-Chair

The MicroMEC platform started life as a platform to run applications at the very edge of the network, like in a light pole. We joined the LF Edge’s Akraino project from the very beginning.

To find out what the use cases would be first, we participated in the IoThon hackathon in 2019 where we built a miniature city with sensors, cameras and small servers — also known as Raspberry Pis. Our plan was that we will provide APIs to enable developers to access the sensors, cameras, or other independent hardware devices attached to our small servers, ie. the MicroMEC nodes. It was clear that we wanted to deploy all the APIs as well as the apps in containers. We needed a tool like Kubernetes to help us build and manage the MicroMEC cluster. As we targeted “small” devices, with max 4GB of RAM -at that time- and low power consumption we looked into alternatives to k8s. That is how we picked k3s. 

By the autumn of 2019 we had our lab running Raspberry Pi 3B+ and 4B nodes with k3s. We had a successful hackathon – Junction 2019 – in Finland where the teams presented solutions utilizing the MicroMEC cluster. We also added OpenFaaS Cloud (OFC) into the mix and a developer UI to the platform. This allowed developers to write serverless applications for the MicroMEC cluster and deploy them with ease. They could concentrate on their core business: developing apps while MicroMEC with OFC took away the burden of cluster management, deployment etc.

Right after Junction, we were at the Akraino 5G MEC Hackathon in the USA. For this event MicroMEC had to become more “MEC”. This implied the implementation of MEC-11 interfaces and the UI to manage those apps that our MEC-11 implementation made discoverable for customers near the MicroMEC cluster. The MEC cluster runs on Arm architecture based hardware.

With all this activity, we missed the first two Akraino releases, but now we are very happy to join the Akraino R3 release! For this, we had to figure out what is the easiest way to install the stack on the device with a MMC card. The easiest way is to not install anything on the fragile card, but boot the stack from a network server. Eventually we made all MicroMEC nodes to boot from a network server using PXE and the storage of each node was attached via iscsi. This requires a fast enough LAN, but thankfully cheap gigabit switches are widely available these days. 

Learn more about Akraino here.

 

August 13, 2020

LF Edge’s Akraino Project Release 3 Now Available, Unifying Open Source Blueprints Across MEC, AI, Cloud and Telecom Edge

By Akraino, Announcement, LF Edge

    • 6 New R3 Blueprints (total of 20)  covering use cases across Telco, Enterprise, IoT, Cloud and more
    • Akraino Blueprints cover areas including MEC, AI/ML, Cloud, Connected Vehicle, AR/VR, Android Cloud Native, smartNICs, Telco Core & Open- RAN, with — ongoing support for R1-R2 blueprints and more
    • Community delivers open edge API specifications — to standardize across devices, applications (cloud native), orchestrations,  and multi-cloud — via new white paper

SAN FRANCISCO –  August 12, 2020 – LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the availability of Akraino Release 3 (“Akraino R3”).  Akraino’s third and most mature release to date delivers fully functional edge solutions– implemented across global organizations– to enable a diversity of edge deployments across the globe. New blueprints include a focus on  MEC, AI/ML, and Cloud edge. In addition, the community authored the first iteration of a new white paper to bring common open edge API standards to align the industry.

Launched in 2018, and now a Stage 3 (or “Impact” stage) project under the LF Edge umbrella, Akraino Edge Stack delivers an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. Designed to improve the state of carrier edge networks, edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, and over-the-top (OTT) edge, it enables flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, maximize applications and functions supported at the edge, and to improve the reliability of systems that must be up at all times. 

“Akraino has evolved to unify edge blueprints across use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “With a growing set of blueprints that enable more and more use cases, we are seeing the power of open source impact every aspect of the edge and how the world accesses and consumes information.”  

About Akraino R3

Akraino Release 3 (R3) delivers a fully functional open source edge stack that enables a diversity of edge platforms across the globe. With R3, Akraino brings deployments and PoCs from a swath of global organizations including Aarna Networks, China Mobile, Equinix, Futurewei, Huawei, Intel, Juniper, Nokia, NVIDIA, Tencent, WeBank, WiPro, and more.

Akraino enables innovative support for new levels of flexibility that scale 5G, industrial IoT, telco, and enterprise edge cloud services quickly, by delivering community-vetted and tested edge cloud blueprints to deploy edge services.  New use cases and new and existing blueprints provide an edge stack for Connected Vehicle, AR/VR, AI at the Edge, Android Cloud Native, SmartNICs, Telco Core and Open-RAN, NFV, IOT, SD-WAN, SDN, MEC, and more. 

 Akraino R3 includes  6 new blueprints for a total of 20,  all tested and validated on real hardware labs supported by users and community members — the Akraino community has established a full-stack, automated testing with strict community standards to ensure high-quality blueprints. 

The 20 “ready and proven” blueprints include both updates and long-term support to existing R1 & R2 blueprints, and the introduction of six new blueprints:

      • The AI Edge – School/Education Video Security Monitoring 
      • 5G MEC/Slice System–  Supports Cloud Gaming, HD Video, and Live Broadcasting
      • Enterprise Applications on Lightweight 5G Telco Edge (EATLEdge)
      • Micro-MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) for SmartCity Use Cases
      • IEC Type 3: Android Cloud Native Applications on Arm®-based  Servers on the Edge 
      • IEC Type 5: Smart NIC: Edge hardware acceleration 

More information on Akraino R3, including links to documentation, code, installation docs for all Akraino Blueprints from R1-R3, can be found here. For details on how to get involved with LF Edge and its projects, visit https://www.lfedge.org/. 

API  White Paper

The Akraino community published the first iteration of a  new white paper to bring common open edge API standards to the industry. The new white paper makes available, for the first time, generic edge APIs for developers to standardize across devices, applications (cloud native), orchestrations,  and multi-cloud. The paper serves as a stepping stone for broad industry alignment on edge definitions, use cases, APIs. Download the paper here: https://www.lfedge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Akraino_Whitepaper.pdf

Looking Ahead

The community is already planning R4, which will include more implementation of open edge API guidelines, more automation of testing, increased alliance with upstream and downstream communities, and development of public cloud standard edge interfaces. Additionally, the community is expecting new blueprints as well as additional enhancements to existing blueprints. 

Don’t miss the Open Networking and Edge Summit (ONES) virtual event happening September 28-29, where Akraino and other LF Edge communities will collaborate on the latest open source edge developments. Registration is now open!

Ecosystem Support for Akraino R3

Arm
“The demands on compute, networking, and storage infrastructure are changing significantly as we connect billions of intelligent devices, many of which live at the edge of the 5G network,” said Kevin Ryan, senior director of software ecosystem development, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “By working closely with the Akraino community on the release of Akraino R3, and through our efforts with Project Cassini for seamless cloud-native deployments, Arm remains committed to providing our partners with full- edge solutions primed to take on the 5G era.”

AT&T 
Mazin Gilbert, VP of Technology and Innovation, AT&T, said: “As a founding member of the Akraino platform, AT&T has seen first-hand the remarkable progress as a result of openness and industry collaboration. AI and edge computing are essential when it comes to creating an intelligent, autonomous 5G network, and we’re proud to work together with the community to deliver the best possible solutions for our customers.”

Baidu
“In the 5G era, AI+ Edge Computing is not only an important guarantee for updating the consumer and industrial Internet experience (such as video consumption re-upgrading, scene-based AI capabilities, etc.), but also a necessary infrastructure for the development of the Internet industry,” said Ning Liu, Director of AI Cloud Group, Baidu. “Providing users with AI-capable edge computing platforms, products and services is one of Baidu’s core strategies. Looking towards the future, Baidu will continue to adhere to the core strategy of open source and cooperate with partners to build a more open and improved ecosystem.” 

China Unicom
“Commercial 5G is going live around the world. Edge computing will play an important role for large bandwidth and low delay services in the 5G era. The key to the success of edge computing is to provide integrated ICT PaaS capabilities, which is beneficial for the collaboration between networks and services, maximizing the value of 5G,” said Xiongyan Tang, Chief Scientist and CTO of the Network Technology Research Institute of China Unicom. “The PCEI Blueprint will define a set of open and common APIs, to promote the deep cooperation between operators and OTTs, and help to build a unified network edge ecosystem.”  

Huawei 
“High bandwidth, low latency, and massive connections are 5G typical features. Based on MEC’s edge computing and open capabilities, 5G network could build the connection, computing, and capabilities required by vertical industries and enables many applications. In the future, 5G MEC will be an open system that provides an application platform with rich atomic capabilities,” said by Bill Ren, Huawei Chief Open Source Liaison Officer. “Managing a large number of applications and devices on the MEC brings great challenges and increases learning costs for developers. We hope to make 5G available through open source, so that more industry partners and developers can easily develop and invoke 5G capabilities. Build a common foundation for carriers’ MEC through open source to ensure the consistency of open interfaces and models. Only in this way can 5G MEC bring tangible benefits to developers and users.”

Juniper Networks
“Juniper Networks is proud to have been an early member of the Akraino community and supportive of this important work. We congratulate this community for introducing new blueprints to expand the use cases for managed edge cloud with this successful third release,” said Raj Yavatkar, Chief Technology Officer at Juniper Networks. “Juniper is actively involved in the integration of multiple blueprints and we look forward to applying these solutions to evolve edge cloud and 5G private networks to spur new service innovations – from content streaming to autonomous vehicles.”

Tencent
“The new generation network is coming, IoT and Edge Computing are developing rapidly. At the same time, it also brings great challenges to technological innovation. High performance, low latency, high scalability, large-scale architecture is a must for all applications. TARS has released the latest version to meet the adjustment of 5G and Edge Computing. Massive devices can easily use TARS Microservice Architecture to realize the innovation of edge applications. The Connect Vehicle Blueprint and AR/VR Blueprint in Akraino are all using the TARS Architecture,” said Mark Shan, Chairman of Tencent Open Source Alliance, Chairman of TARS Foundation, and Akraino TSC Member. “The blueprints on the TARS Architecture solve the problem of high throughput and low latency. TARS is a neutral project in the Linux Foundation, which can be easily used and helped by anyone from the open-source community.”

Zenlayer
“We are proud to be part of the Edge Cloud community. Zenlayer is actively exploring edge solutions and integrating the solutions to our bare metal product. We hope the edge products will empower rapid customer innovation in video streaming, gaming, enterprise applications and more,” said Jim XU, chief engineering architect of Zenlayer.

About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

August 12, 2020

EdgeX Foundry on ELIOT Blueprint

By Akraino, Blog, EdgeX Foundry, LF Edge

Written by Ramya Ranganathan, IOTG Validation Architect at Intel and EdgeX Foundry TSC member and EdgeX Test/QA WG Contributor

 

Background

In the recent past, EdgeX has experience challenges in running regression tests on different platforms. Some of the difficulty has been attributed to not running the EdgeX platform tests on While it could be attributed to a pre-validated OS/SW configuration.

Idea

By running on a pre-validated base platform, the hope was to eliminate the platform variabilities and limit the debug scope to EdgeX SW. This in turn would lead to a quicker debug, throughput and finally quicker time to market.

Why LF Edge Akraino Blue Print

Since LF Edge has been spearheading the Akraino Blue print effort to provide a holistic design of EdgeX suitable platforms with respect to scalability, availability, security using finite set of configurations, and ease of use by Zero-touch provisioning, a proposal was put forth by EdgeX QA/Test work group to use a light weight Akraino blue print as “pre-validated base platform” for EdgeX engineering activities. The motivation was that the team could leverage the results from Akraino’s blue print validation framework and use it as a stable base platform for EdgeX engineering activities. While the motivation was from within the EdgeX community, this also served as a testimony to LF Edge’s Akraino initiative and to the importance of the LF Edge umbrella project to provide wholistic solutions to the EdgeX and larger LF Edge communities.

Engineering Activity & Results

Akraino offers several Blue prints, so the first task was to identify the right blueprint for EdgeX needs. ELIOT blue print has been chosen by the EdgeX QA/Test WG for this initial feasibility study as it seems to have a light weight foot print as the name suggests and also it is supported on both ARM and x86 architectures. EdgeX QA/Test WG members got LF Edge accounts and access to the Thunder Pod2 ARM based system and were able to get the EdgeX tests up and running on ELIOT Blue print with minimal effort (which goes in line with the key principle behind Akraino’s blue print goal).

Learn more about the Akraino ELIOT Blueprint: AkrainoELIOTBluePrint.pdf

Conclusion

This activity is an example of the early engagements between EdgeX and other LF Edge projects – one of mutual value to the engineers in both communities and demonstrating the value of a larger edge computing umbrella project.

For more information about Akraino Blueprints, click here: https://wiki.akraino.org/. To learn more about EdgeX Foundry, click here: https://wiki.edgexfoundry.org/. Or, join the conversation on the EdgeX Foundry Slack Channel.

April 10, 2020

Akraino Edge Stack Enables Connected Car, AR/VR, AI Edge, and Telco Access Edge Application Use Cases

By Akraino, Announcement

 

  • Akraino R2 delivers new levels of flexibility for scale, efficiency, and high availability while accelerating deployment of edge applications
  • Augments edge stacks delivered in R1 – including Network Cloud, IoT Edge, Enterprise Edge, and Telecom Edge– with new and enhanced tested and validated deployment-ready blueprints

SAN FRANCISCO –  January 16, 2020 – LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stack Release 2 (“Akraino R2”).  Akraino’s second release furthers the power of intelligent edge with new and enhanced deployable, self-certified blueprints for a diverse set of edge use cases.

Launched in 2018, and now a Stage 3 (or “Impact” stage) project under the LF Edge umbrella, Akraino Edge Stack is creating an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. Designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, over-the-top (OTT) edge, and carrier edge networks, it offers users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.

“The Akraino community has grown rapidly in the past year, and now includes contributions from 70 percent of LF Edge Premium member companies and countless other ecosystem partners beginning to deploy the blueprints across the globe,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “With R2, strong community collaboration brings even more blueprints to the ecosystem that support current and future technology at the open source edge.”

About Akraino R2
Akraino Release 2 delivers the next iteration of open source edge cloud innovation for new levels of flexibility that scale 5G, industrial IoT, telco, and enterprise edge cloud services quickly, by delivering community-vetted edge cloud blueprints to deploy edge services. The blueprints address interoperability, packaging, and testing under open standards, which reduces users’ overall deployment costs and integration time. 

Akraino R2 includes 6 blueprint families and 14 blueprints, all tested and validated on real hardware labs supported by users and community members. This release enhances the edge stacks delivered in R1 for cross-disciplinary edge use cases as well as new edge stacks to support connected vehicles, AR/VR, NFV, Telco Access, integration with SDN solutions and project promotions to maturity, with rigorous community standards. 

The 14 “ready and proven” blueprints, include both updates to existing R1 blueprints, and the introduction of five new blueprints:

  • Connected Vehicle: This blueprint establishes an open source MEC platform to enable use cases such as accuracy of location, smarter navigation with real-time traffic updates, driver safety improvements, and traffic rule alerts. 
  • IEC type 4: AR/VR-oriented Edge Stack: Focused on focused on AR/ VR applications running on the edge, the blueprint builds the AR/VR infrastructure and introduces  a virtual classroom application, which improves online education experiences for teachers and students through a virtual classroom simulation. 
  • Integrated Cloud Native NFV/Application Stack (ICN): ICN addresses the overall challenges of edge deployments in a single deployment model that enables Edge Providers for Zero Touch Provisioning support in multi-cloud, multi-edge and multi-party orchestration. It integrates Kubernetes and ONAP4K8s for container run times and service orchestration and supports bare metal and virtual deployments. 
  • Network Cloud and Tungsten Fabric: This blueprint implements the Network Cloud with LF Networking’s Tungsten Fabric as an SDN Controller supporting cloud native integration for Kubernetes as well as the Neutron plugin for OpenStack, allowing operators to leverage Tungsten Fabric as a deployment tool and control infrastructure. 
  • SDN-Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA): Part of the the Telco Appliance blueprint family, SEBA provides an appliance tuned to support the SDN-enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) platform. The blueprint utilizes a reusable set of modules introduced by the Radio Edge Cloud (REC), introduced in Akraino R1.

More information on Akraino R2, including links to documentation, can be found here. For details on how to get involved with LF Edge and its projects, visit https://www.lfedge.org/. 

Looking Ahead
The community is already planning R3, which will include more new blueprints such as Edge AI/ML, 5G MEC/Slice, Time Critical Edge, and Micro-MEC and more, as well as enhancements to existing blueprints and tools for automated blueprint validations

Don’t miss the Open Networking and Edge Summit (ONES) North America, April 20-21 in Los Angeles, where Akraino and other LF Edge communities will be onsite to share the latest open source edge developments. 

About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

January 16, 2020
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