eBook

The SUSE Guide to Edge Computing in a Cloud

Native World 2021SUSE.com 2021

Introduction – Let’s define Edge Although the topological concept of edge computing may be decades old, the limitations imposed by the centralized implementation of hyperscale cloud and the growing investment in IoT have thrust edge topology into the limelight. Edge computing places content, data and processing closer to the applications, things and users that consume and interact with them1.

Edge computing is entering the mainstream landscape into three logical areas: Near, Far as organizations look to extend cloud to and Tiny. on-premises and to take advantage of IoT and transformational digital business Near Edge applications1. Computing infrastructure that is between the data center and the far edge. For example, Depending upon where the edge infrastruc- Cell tower-based compute, Telecom Central ture is located, we can segment the Edge Offices, and Campus compute facilities.

1 Gartner - 2021 Strategic Roadmap for Edge Computing

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Far Edge Challenge: How to simplify lifecycle Edge computing infrastructure which is management of Edge devices deployed in a location furthest from the data center. This will be on-site and close to the With edge devices, organizations achieve end-point devices (from a network latency tremendous flexibility and modularity in perspective). Examples of Far Edge include: designing the products/services that they can offer and do it at scale. On the flip side, • Commercial sector: Retail (shop or mall), the scale of deployment starts becoming a Hospitality (hotel), Banking (local branch key element of design. office), Education (school), Healthcare (medical center) Organizations face some common pain • Industrial sector: Agriculture, Oil and points: Gas (drilling location), Manufacturing (factory floor), Transportation (airline, • Static builds of device firmware are no trains), Energy (wind turbines), Utilities longer acceptable. Security patches and (electricity, water facilities) feature enhancements are routine and • Public Sector: Defense and Intelligence, frequent. Civilian agencies, State and Local • Device servicing/maintenance/updates must be delivered over the network as Tiny Edge compared to onsite visit of a technician. The end-point itself (e.g. microcontroller • Lifecycle management of these devices enabled sensors, actuators, fixed function must be automated. devices, etc.). Often referred to as “edge devices” – the Internet of Things (IoT) fit here. In order to address the pain points, the edge The tiny edge is typically within the same solution is expected to provide: network as a Far edge service. • Device registration and onboarding capabilities • Leading security positioning - Security is critical as edge deploy- ments lose the protection of the data center, introduce new attack vectors and lead to an increasing attack surface area. • Deployment and management guidance

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All the above needs to accommodate • Lightweight cloud-native edge stack, growth from 10s to 100s to 1000s and beyond. which is also Kubernetes-ready As the edge deployments scale, eliminat- • Reliable & secure edge infrastructure ing or reducing the operational overhead of • Aim for maintenance-free infrastructure managing edge at scale becomes key. The challenge becomes one of “Management Lightweight Kubernetes at the Edge at Scale”. Combine that with the fact that SUSE Edge utilizes K3s - a CNCF sandbox market has yet to offer a fully-managed project that delivers lightweight Kubernetes edge solution. So, to an administrator/ distribution fit for resource constrained and architect, the question becomes - Can we remote location or IoT devices. really have “Full Lifecycle Management” for the Edge? K3s was built by the SUSE Rancher team and was donated to the CNCF in August 2020. Our unique approach K3s is production ready and packaged as a single binary optimized for ARM64 and SUSE’s approach is born in the cloud and ARMv7 support. meets the edge wherever it is – near, far or tiny. When used with SUSE Rancher, K3s provides users with an exceptionally reliable, SUSE is creating an open source, cloud comprehensive Kubernetes experience native solution for full stack edge infra- that confidently manages thousands structure management. A true open-source of clusters across the Edge. Using SUSE solution for full stack Edge infrastructure Rancher’s GitOps-powered Continuous management, with following 3 foundations: Delivery features, K3s users can manage up to 1 million edge clusters built on x86 or ARM64-based hardware with maximum consistency and efficiency.

Longhorn, also a CNCF project, is used to deliver a powerful, distributed, software- defined storage platform for Kubernetes that can run anywhere. When combined with SUSE Rancher, Longhorn makes the deployment of highly available persistent block storage for your edge-based Kubernetes clusters easy, fast, and reliable.

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By supporting both x86 and ARM64 updates, config changes are performed architectures, Longhorn is the first seamless. When things go wrong, security Kubernetes-native storage solution signed and verified transactional updates designed to help teams store data reliably are easy to rollback. within even the most remote, low-powered environments at the edge. SUSE Rancher’s Continuous Delivery utilizes a ‘GitOps’ approach to help users manage Operating System Built for Edge and deploy thousands of Kubernetes 100% open source and built using open clusters easily. Driven by project ‘Fleet’, standards, SLE Micro provides a reliable and Rancher Continuous Delivery gives users secure OS Platform for the Edge. SLE Micro is the ability to manage Kubernetes at the built from ground up to support containers Edge across any infrastructure environment. and microservices. In summary, the SUSE Edge solution SLE Micro leverages the enterprise- addresses a broad set of use cases hardened technology components of SUSE ranging from organizations that are cloud- Linux Enterprise and merges that with what ready to organizations ready for cloud- developers want from a modern, immutable native. The solution is modular. So, when OS platform to provide an ultra-reliable combined with SUSE Manager you can infrastructure platform that is also simple use it for edge use cases that are not fully to use. containerized. For edge use cases that are fully containerized and cloud-native, SLE common code base provides FIPS 140- Rancher can enable managing the lifecycle 2, DISA SRG/STIG, integration with CIS and of large-scale edge setups down to the Common Criteria certified configurations. OS level2. Fully supported security framework (SELinux) with policies is included.

Both Arm and x86 architectures are supported so you have architectural flexibility in deploying a broad range of edge applications.

Near Zero Maintenance Our goal is zero maintenance - all routine maintenance functions like patches,

2 Check with SUSE team for availability of OS level manage- ment with Rancher.

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Industry Trends This gives decision makers an ideal environment to rapidly formulate new Manufacturing innovative strategies and explore Prior to COVID-19, the global manufacturing new opportunities including robotics, industry had been re-building momentum automation and machine learning to help and increasing productivity with heavy build a profitable and sustainable future investments into technologies such for the industry whilst solving the current as artificial intelligence (AI), enhanced challenges around supply chain and connectivity, and Internet of Things (IoT). resourcing. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the sudden forced shutdowns across the globe have forced many manufacturing organizations to reassess the acceleration of their digital transformation and find strategies to overcome the supply chain roadblocks and workforce restrictions instead.

As manufacturing trends regain momentum towards building connectivity and utilizing AI and IoT and applications, infrastructure Automotive decision makers and their teams will need to Having transformed the way we learn, look at refitting their legacy solutions with cloud- communicate and work, the digital native alternatives. Legacy systems have been revolution is also redefining the way we a reliable solution for the industry over the last commute. Due to technical maturity few decades however they are not conducive enabling more advancements possible, the to creating the innovative agile development automobile industry is poised to invest $52 environment needed to transform. billion in software focusing on autonomous driving and connectivity features by Open-source tools and Kubernetes give 2025. As a result, the autonomous driving development teams the opportunity to build software market is expected to increase at a high-performing resilient processes that compound annual growth rate of 17 percent can operate anywhere from on-prem, cloud between 2019 and 2025, and 30 percent of and at the edge without being restricted a car’s value will come from its software by by legacy solutions. Helping development 20303. teams establish an infrastructure strategy and environment that promotes flexibility, 3 https://www.suse.com/success/elektrobit/ agility and resiliency across the business.

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However, the automotive industry faces unique challenges:

• Legacy automotive solutions, both at the infrastructure layer and application layer, lack the agility and flexibility required for rapid digital transformation. • Connected platforms should be hardware and cloud-agnostic, with no vendor lock-in and must employ open governance to support multiple clouds, on-premises, and edge use cases. • Automotive companies that can orchestrate containerized apps securely Telecommunications across any infrastructure, including the Telecommunication organizations are edge, will experience significant savings. rapidly transforming to adapt to new consumer behaviors. With content and data To remain competitive, players are using consumption forecasted to exponentially lightweight, embedded Linux operating grow, from new workplace, entertainment systems and Kubernetes to build integrated and schooling expectations, the availability cloud to edge platforms that deliver of 5G-enabled services and the connectivity connected car use cases and explore new of Telco’s becomes a priority for consumers. business models. This rapid adoption of 5G-capable mobile and edge platforms creates a new wave In the near term, automotive companies are of data as consumers expect more exploring software over-the-air (SOTA) and customized content on-demand. firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates. As per the Analysys Mason survey4 of 30 Longer-term opportunities exist in the Tier-1 operators from 12 countries - “Edge transfer of content to and from vehicles computing is of high strategic importance including insurance tracking and on- to operators, and first-movers are forging demand entertainment content. To be ahead with early deployments. 87% of successful, automotive companies must the operators in survey consider edge deploy open, reliable and the flexible computing to be a top strategic priority in application platforms to the vehicle edge the short term.” The survey also indicated and develop cloud-based products that that video and gaming are expected to be can monetize them. the common early use cases for edge.

4 Survey by research and consulting firm Analysys Mason.

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The telecom industry faces the following in a telco’s ability to succeed in managing challenges: the volume of expected data. As operational strategies focus to consumer retention and • Kubernetes-based containers-as-a satisfaction, data captured will be used to service (CaaS) will replace VM-based help create competitive advantage. This infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) such is where open-source solutions will play as OpenStack over the next decade. a pivotal role in capitalizing these trends • Specialist providers still dominate the as telco’s look to simplify, modernize, and telecom’s market, offering integrated accelerate their service delivery. core services for EPC, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IPMS), Subscriber Data Healthcare Management (SDM), etc. that force Technology has had an immense impact customers to select siloed solutions from on how the healthcare industry operates. just one vendor. Patients and medical practitioners now • Telco leaders are concerned about the rely on technology including artificial cost, lock-in, and lack of agility offered by intelligence, machines and big data to legacy solutions. make better health decisions.

To meet new consumer demands New patient services like telehealth are and remain competitive, Telco’s must expanding the reach of medical practitioners orchestrate and containerize workloads but are also placing new pressures on IT across their network and replace legacy operators to deliver secure and reliable infrastructure solutions with new cloud- network and connections for off-site and native alternatives. In order to manage video consultations often across multiple their geographically dispersed network devices and locations. locations and deliver 5G-services, Telco’s must leverage cost effective, open-source The digitization of patient records and solutions such as Kubernetes. These cloud diagnostic data transmission also presents native solutions will become a necessity another challenge for IT operations who to help Telco’s retain their market share need to fortify their infrastructure stack from Over-The-Top providers and help against the increasing number of cyber and build the efficiency and flexibility needed ransomware attacks targeting the aging to transform. Windows-based environments common across the healthcare sector. Upskilling engineering and development teams to deploy scalable cloud-native Tackling the newness of these technologies infrastructure solutions will be fundamental and growing threats also presents

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another challenge. Commonly publicly commercial aircraft, helicopters, and funded, healthcare technology teams military transports alongside a market- face limitations around budgeting and leading portfolio of data, navigation, resourcing to attract the necessary talent and communications services. Satellite required to implement and sustain these technology is also a significant part of the solutions. Combined with the scarcity of company’s portfolio as more organizations technology talent, the high recruitment cost look at new ways to work in space. for IT operators is often a prohibitive factor of healthcare providers to modernize their Providing highly advanced, high- technology stack and environment. resolution images and delivering them back to earth in real-time means a Cloud-native solutions provide the substantial bandwidth overhead. Airbus healthcare sector reliable, scalable and has focused on reducing bandwidth by resourceful alternatives to improve their building processing capabilities into local legacy infrastructure solutions. Often ground stations to address this challenge. lightweight and compatible with edge environments these solutions give Running on Kubernetes, Airbus’ distributed technology teams in healthcare an infrastructure platform provides a consistent accessible ecosystem of tools that can be framework for application development retrofitted into their existing complex legacy while allowing teams to configure and stacks. secure deployments for different use cases rapidly. Solutions like SUSE Edge enable healthcare providers to build the developer agility needed to help them digitally transform. “Trying to deploy multiple new services against large fleets of satellites would By utilizing a suite of open-source, lean, involve the manual, sequential deployment of enterprise grade products including software across devices, delivered in stages. Linux, Kubernetes and SUSE Rancher – IT With Kubernetes, we can design and develop operators can attract talent, manage everything once, for the entire fleet.” their environment and modernize their stack without compromising on security, Jean-Philippe Gouin, Cloud Architect, Airbus performance and resource budget.

Use Cases Using Rancher, Kubernetes clusters within ground stations can scale up and down Airbus at a moment’s notice to perform heavy- Airbus manufactures industry-leading duty image analysis. The data is processed

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locally, then packaged and delivered with transportation. The company is now present far less bandwidth requirements, more in 59 countries and has more than 232,000 efficiently, and at a much lower cost. employees around the globe.

Airbus’ Kubernetes strategy has had a When containers emerged, Continental’s marked impact. By using a common IT operations team saw an opportunity to methodology, development projects are streamline infrastructure management. The completed faster and more consistently primary driver for adopting a cloud native, using defined rules. Their cloud native container-centric strategy was to transform infrastructure platform is accessible 24 Continental’s manufacturing infrastructure hours a day, seven days a week, with access into an agile, cloud native, and platform- tightly controlled by Rancher. By adding based architecture. Adopting Kubernetes technologies like K3s, Airbus envisions and Rancher has had a marked impact on future data processing taking place on the the company’s operations. satellites themselves, at the point of image capture. “Transforming large manufacturing organizations like Continental is a huge technical and philosophical challenge. The emphasis is on finding the most intuitive and efficient way to modernize while maintaining competitive advantage. Kubernetes and Rancher will help us achieve this.”

Roland Paxián, Manufacturing Infrastructure Team Lead, Continental

Managing this Kubernetes-based infrastructure platform in Rancher, Continental has created a highly agile and scalable application framework, which has removed complexity and significantly Continental reduced management overheads. Their Founded in 1871, Continental offers safe, new containerized architecture allows them efficient, intelligent, and affordable to run applications in separate clusters in solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic, and any geographic location, with development,

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test, and production environments already Due to visionary companies like Elektrobit, in place. If they need a place to spin up new autonomous driving and the connected car containers to try new ideas, they can create are no longer future ideas but realities on them in minutes. the road today. As the speed of innovation increases across the automotive industry, In 2021, the Continental team will extend their vehicles are now as much software Kubernetes rollout to 45 locations globally, platforms as chassis and engines. This covering more than 1,000 different services in fundamental shift away from hardware 50,000 production stations. Once complete, dominated to software-defined vehicles they plan to use Rancher’s Continuous means there is a need to completely rethink Delivery capabilities to manage custom apps the customer experience of the future best- on up to 400,000 edge devices running K3s. selling vehicles.

Software-defined vehicles bring new experiences to both manufacturers and drivers. No longer will car owners need to sit at the auto shop to replace outdated firmware. Maintenance and features will be delivered not through an appointment with a dealer but automatically over the air. Autonomous driving means software- driven cars, and Linux will be at the heart of ensuring the performance, safety, and security of that software.

Elektrobit Elektrobit and SUSE aim to provide an open Elektrobit is a global supplier of embedded and transparent software platform for and connected software products and automobiles that includes seamless system services for the automotive industry. A updates over the air. leader in automotive software with more than 30 years serving the industry, “We’re proud to partner with SUSE to bring Elektrobit’s software powers over one billion this vision to life. We have confidence that to- devices in more than 100 million vehicles gether we will create cutting-edge solutions and offers flexible, innovative solutions for for the market that will transform how cars are car infrastructure software, connectivity powered, not a few years down the line, but in and security, automated driving, and user the next generation of automobiles.” experience. Alexander Kocher, President & Managing Director, Elektrobit

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In the future, SUSE technology will power the benefits of DevSecOps, Kubernetes, autonomous driving, and ultimately, deliver and AI/ML apps in remote and often a technology platform that everyday disconnected environments. Working with consumers will depend on for their K3s, the Hypergiant team is developing transportation needs. What is developed and integrating their software pipeline with in conjunction with Elektrobit will lay the the EdgeONE and SatelliteONE missions, foundation for software deployed in other including the launch of a K3s-embedded industries just as critical to our lives, such satellite planned in 2021. as aerospace, healthcare, and beyond.

“K3s is helping us build confidence in modern systems. We need to demonstrate the ability to update mission-critical applications and components, recover from failure, rollback, and roll forward. We need to prove reliability and survivability in space and on the ground – this is the key to making Kubernetes successful at the edge.”

Bren Briggs, Director of DevOps and Cybersecurity, Hypergiant

The satellite industry faces several significant Hypergiant challenges. Firstly, software development Hypergiant creates emerging AI-driven and delivery on space-rated hardware are technologies for Fortune 500 and costly, slow, and cold. Very cold. On average, government clients in space science and temperatures in space are 2.7 Kelvin (-455 exploration, satellite communications, Fahrenheit or -270 Celsius). Consequently, aviation, defense, healthcare, transportation, in-orbit satellite software updates are often and more. not possible or incredibly time-consuming and expensive. As a result, AI/ML capabilities SUSE Rancher Government Solutions is are far behind those currently available partnering with Hypergiant and DOD on earth. Secondly, satellite connectivity PlatformONE to do the impossible – putting and bandwidth are poor, which makes Kubernetes on satellites for the first time. downloading large images and other data Together, the team will demonstrate difficult.

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The SatelliteONE mission was designed Looking Ahead to solve these challenges. The project will demonstrate DevSecOps in space by To dig deeper into emerging use cases for leveraging PlatformONE’s CI/CD pipeline running Kubernetes and adaptable Linux alongside K3s provisioning and deployment. at the edge, we welcome you to watch Importantly, it will evaluate the use of lower- the sessions, case studies, demos and cost hardware on satellite payloads, show conversations with open source experts at how the rapid delivery of software updates SUSECON Digital 2021 https://susecon.com/. in space can be done, and demonstrate the use of AI/ML software in orbit. We look forward to engaging with you. Feel free to reach out to SUSE Team @ https:// www.suse.com/contact/.

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