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Delivery:  ~June 2018

The main theme for the California release of EdgeX is to provide a solid open source foundation for commercialization and deployment in a wide variety of Industrial IoT edge use cases. 

Key to this is the first implementation of priority APIs, infrastructure, and reference microservices for security.  Another key theme for the California release is improving overall performance and lowering the baseline footprint of the code base.  Work is currently underway for drop-in alternatives for key microservices (e.g. Core Services, Export and Device Services) based in Go Lang with a stretch goal being select implementations in C.  Overall, the California release will improve EdgeX ease of use among a larger, more polyglot, development community.  

Planned features to be delivered (as of January 2018 TSC Face-to-Face meeting and updated at April 4th TSC Meeting).

Release Themes and Objectives

  • Deliver initial security infrastructure (e.g. reverse proxy, key management)
  • Deliver on promise for a performant, reliable IoT edge platform
    • Reduce overall footprint by an order of magnitude through alternative microservice implementations in Go Lang and possibly C
    • Enable near real-time performance (see targets below)
  • Improved and overhauled documentation set

    Moving developer documentation from Wiki to GitHub so that it is updated/maintained/reviewed like code is (through formal pull requests, etc.).  This allows the documentation to also be versioned with the codebase.  Use of standard documentation tools and processes, allow the documentation to be “built” by the CI processes and released in more user friendly (and portable) fashion.

  • Device Service SDKs in Go Lang and C/C++
  • Blackbox tests for the entire EdgeX API set

    Currently, there are blackbox REST API tests against the core services (core-data, core-metadata, core-command).  Additional blackbox REST API coverage is needed for the supporting services (logging, notifications, scheduler, etc.), export services (export-client, export-distro), and device services (some of which apply to the SDK and can be used against generic device services built by the SDK).

  • Arm 64 native testing - with continuous integration processes extended to produce artifacts and support the native testing

General Release Tasks and Notes

  • Expand hardware support - ARM 64
    EdgeX has been built to be cross platform.  Some micro services (such as those written in Go) require compiling to the native platforms (cross compiling).  Once the program artifacts for the platform have been created, they also need to be containerized (in Docker) and some of the containerization is platform dependent.  Finally, it is also desired that the micro services be tested on their native platform.  While virtual machines and simulation environments can allow functional tests to occur, some issues and performance metrics for that platform can only be identified when running on the target platform.  This task therefore includes:
    • CI process that includes cross compiling for Intel/Arm platform artifacts
    • Micro service Docker container images produced for Intel and Arm platforms
    • Native platform testing of the micro services on Intel and Arm platforms

  • Not MVP, but additional contributions sought for
    • Alternate (from Docker/Docker Compose) deployment and orchestration options
      Today, while the community and users of EdgeX are free to deploy EdgeX as they see fit based on their use case/needs, the EdgeX community provides Docker container images and a docker-compose.yml file to help get and deploy EdgeX.  Going forward, it is anticipated that the community will seek and even need alternate means of deploying, managing, and orchestrating the EdgeX micro services.  Options include using Kubernetes, Swarm, Mesos, Nomad, to name a few.  Additional support may be offered by system management tools or facilities.  At this time, the community welcomes input and contributions in this area from the community and user groups, but has no firm plan to do work in this area by the California release.

Micro Service Tasks and Notes

  • Meet all performance targets
    While more requirements are needed, the overall performance targets for EdgeX are listed at the bottom of this page and include running all the core, support and application micro services in < 1GB or RAM on a 64 bit CPU, requiring less than 32GB of disk storage space, start (collectively) in under 1 minute and actuate from sensor collection to device trigger in < 1 second.
  • Not MVP, but additional contributions sought for
    • Improved and more dynamic configuration
      Consul today provides for centralized configuration of the micro services.  The configuration seed service is used to initialize Consul with configuration from each of the micro services.  This process is often error prone given the multiple configuration files in each micro service (and often multiple for the various environments such as dockerized or non-dockerized).  Can the initialization of Consul be improved, simplified, and made less error prone?
      Changes to configuration in Consul are immediately made available to applications.  However, applications must implement a “watcher” to see a configuration change and then call to get that change (the core-config-watcher in GitHub was meant to demonstrate how to do this but was never implemented or used in any service).  Further, even if micro services are made to be more dynamic in watching for and using new/updated configuration, some of the configuration changes would only work after a restart (ex: the REST endpoint port number of the micro service).  Is there a way to signify which configuration is allowed to be changed at runtime and which can only take affect after a restart of the service.
    • Better Export Services flexibility/SDK-like elements
      In the export distribution service (Java or Go), facilities to provide endpoints with EdgeX data are statically programmed into the pipeline of this service today.  That is, when data comes to export distribution, based on a client’s registration, it is filtered, transformed/formatted, compressed, and then encrypted.  Some options are provided (like allowing formatting in JSON versus XML), but these options are again statically build into the export distribution pipe.  If a user wishes to add new filters, new transformations (example adding a CSV format), new encryption or compression routines, then the user must get the export-distro code base, fork it and make their own copy.  Is there a way to create plugins or modules into the pipe-filter architecture of the export-distro so that it is more flexible to meet new needs going forward?  Is it possible to make some sort of SDK for the export-distro service so users can essentially create a custom export facility with the options for filtering, transforming, enriching, etc. the EdgeX data as they see fit without having to fork and rebuild the entire micro service on their own?

Device Service SDK and Device Service Tasks and Notes

  • Provide alternative SDK language support in Go Lang and possibly C
    In addition to lowering the footprint and improving performance of the device service micro services, drawing in more sensors/devices to the EdgeX platform can be achieved by providing more alternative language device service SDKs – primarily those in C/++ and Go.

Security Tasks and Notes

  • A OS reverse proxy will be selected and integrated to EdgeX

    • Integrate with AAA service (see below)

    • With no (or very few) changes to existing micro services at this time

  • Currently looking at Kong

    • This will be for HTTP/S only (meaning security for MQTT and other protocols will not yet be provided)

    • Use of JWT for authentication/access token

  • Data Protection Services via HashiCorps’s Vault will be integrated with EdgeX

    • This will provide Key Management, Certificate Services, Encryption

    • API abstraction to allow 3rd party implementation/extensions

    • Some additional research/work needs to be finalized for California around license, external CA support, local crypto library, bootstrap provisioning, local secure store for bootstrap credentials, unattended startup

Target Performance

  • The target is to run all of EdgeX (all the services to include the virtual device service) on a Raspberry Pi 3 (1 GB RAM, 64bit CPU, at least 32GB storage space, running Raspbian Linux distro)

    • This is not an endorsement of the platform as our favorite or otherwise endorsed platform

    • It only suggests the general characteristics of a “developer community” target platform

    • This may not be entirely feasible without all Go replacements, but is the target and the development community will report back when/where this is not possible

    • For example, it is unlikely the target security implementation will fit on this size platform

  • Additional “developer community” targets

    • Startup in 1 minute or less (post OS boot – from micro service start to all services up and available)

    • Throughput for one piece of data (with one IP device connected by hard wire – versus WiFi) from data ingestion at the Device Service layer, through Core Data, to Rules Engine and back down through Command Service finally to Device Service for actuation will be < 1 second


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