Edge Computing Patterns for Solution Architects: Learn methods and principles of resilient distributed application architectures from hybrid cloud to far edge

Edge Computing Patterns for Solution Architects

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This book would not be possible without the unwavering support and understanding of Radha and tons of encouragement from Sameer, Siddharth, and Mythili. They collectively inspire me with their own successes. And to my newest cheerleader, Seelan, who never ceases to amaze me.

-- Ashok Iyengar

To my mentor and guide, Rob High. Thanks for the guidance, trust, and opportunity to learn about edge computing.

– Joe Pearson

Contributors

About the authors

Ashok Iyengar is an Executive Cloud Architect at IBM. As a member of the Architecture Guild, he focuses on creating solution architectures that encompass distributed computing, edge computing and AI. He follows NDSU Bison football and is eagerly looking forward to bringing generative AI to edge computing. He enjoys being a mentor, author, speaker and blogger.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my co-author, Joe Pearson, who keeps me honest. I would not have undertaken this effort if it was not for his willingness, encouragement and tireless work ethic.

Joseph Pearson has worked as a college instructor and in various media companies for over three decades, most recently as Software Architect at The Weather Channel on weather.com. He has since worked for IBM Cloud as a Strategist and then IBM Software in Edge Computing. He currently works for IBM Software’s Networking and Edge Computing unit on their open source strategy. He volunteers with the Linux Foundation as Chair of the LF Edge Technical Advisory Council (TAC) and leads the Open Horizon project. And in any spare time, he enjoys geocaching.

I would like to thank my wife and children for bearing with me as I stole time from them throughout the process of writing this book. I especially want to thank Ashok Iyengar for supporting and encouraging me to tackle working on this book when it seemed so daunting. It’s always helpful to have an experienced friend and author to collaborate with who can also be a big brother and provide frank guidance when it’s most needed.

About the reviewer

Frédéric Desbiens manages Embedded, IoT, and Edge Computing programs at the Eclipse Foundation, Europe’s largest open-source organization. His job is to help the community innovate by bringing devices and software together. He is a strong supporter of open source. In the past, he worked as a product manager, solutions architect, and developer for companies as diverse as Pivotal, Cisco, and Oracle. Frédéric holds an MBA in electronic commerce, a BASc in Computer Science, and a BEd, all from Université Laval (Québec City, Canada).

Frédéric is the author of Building Enterprise IoT Solutions using Eclipse IoT Technologies: An Open-Source Approach to Edge Computing, published in December 2022 by Apress (ISBN: 978-1484288818).

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1:Overview of Edge Computing as a Problem Space

1

Our View of Edge Computing

Suggested pre-reading material

Speaking like an edge native

What is the edge?

Are the edge and the cloud extremes of the same thing?

How does edge computing bring value, and why now?

Which edge? Categorizing edges

The user edge – field-deployed compute

The SP edge – regional compute

Your computer or mine? Tactics for service deployment

Edge computing doesn’t require dedicated resources

Single device, running multiple applications simultaneously

Single device, alternating applications by schedule or purpose

Hosted edge infrastructure – applications on shared compute

Cloud-out versus edge-in

Looking deeper at cloud-out architectures

Delving into edge-in architectures

Introducing archetype patterns

What is an archetype?

The days of software creation

Deploying archetype patterns

Summary

2

Edge Architectural Components

Edge components

Functional requirements

Sensing

Inferencing

Analytics

Data

Non-functional requirements

Security

Service management and operations

Edge use cases and patterns

Edge device specifications and protocols

Architectural decisions

Grouping edge ADs

Cloud

Network

Server/cluster

Device

Summary

Part 2: Solution Architecture Archetypes in Context

3

Core Edge Architecture

Suggested pre-reading material

What is legacy IoT architecture?

A bit of history

Purpose and promise

Fundamental drawbacks

Device configuration

Rationale

Architectural element categories

Edge devices versus edge hub

Reviewing the pattern

Self-propelled inspection robot example

Containers

Disconnected operations

Summary

4

Network Edge Architecture

Definitions

NFV

NFV considerations

SDN

VNF, NFV, SDN, and edge computing

Underlay and overlay networks

Network traffic management

MEC

Network edge architecture

RAN

CSPs and hyperscalers

Sample architectures

Manufacturing scenario

Healthcare scenario

Campus network scenario

Summary

5

End-to-End Edge Architecture

IT and OT convergence

AI and edge computing

Industrial edge scenario

Manufacturing scenario

Retail edge scenario

Retail store scenario

Network slicing

Example scenario

Edge reference architecture

The cloud

The network

The edge

Edge and distributed cloud computing

Distributed cloud computing

The scenario

Summary

Part 3: Related Considerations and Concluding Thoughts

6

Data Has Weight and Inertia

Suggested pre-reading material

Data encryption

Motivations for encrypting data

Protecting data without making it difficult to use

Ensuring that data modifications are noticeable

Data storage and management

Strategies for defining and enforcing data policies

Usage options ranging from real to synthetic data

Rules of thumb for retaining data, or not

Using data to build machine learning (ML) models

The promise of foundation models

How small and efficient can we make models?

Customizing existing models for each deployment

Using general-purpose platforms rather than single-purpose applications

Connectivity and the data plane

Optimizing data availability without connectivity

Aggregating data versus keeping it distributed

Migrating data files automatically

Summary

7

Automate to Achieve Scale

Automating service delivery

DevOps

Infrastructure as code

Extending automation to the edge

Developing edge applications

Scalability with automation

Prepping an edge device

Prepping an edge cluster

Operational security

Limiting physical access

Limiting connectivity

Trusted hardware and provisioning

Trusted data

Trusted compute

Tactical Edge

Automation with AI

LLMs and generative AI

Using AI in automation

Summary

8

Monitoring and Observability

Monitoring and observability

How monitoring works

How observability works

How network observability works

Measuring to improve

Network observability example

What to measure

Real user monitoring

Network performance management

Anomaly detection

Capacity

Business outcomes

Improving edge solution

Monitoring challenges at the edge

Configuration changes at the edge

Edge application monitoring

Personas

Summary

9

Connect Judiciously but Thoughtlessly

Suggested pre-reading material

Declarative versus imperative configuration

Comparing the two approaches

What slows down application deployment on the edge?

Solutioning edge-connected networks and applications

Zero Trust or as close as you can get

Managing secrets on the edge

Zero Trust architectures in edge computing

Secure access service edge

Overlay, underlay, and shared responsibilities

The network underlay

The network overlay

Zero Trust Network Access

End-to-end encryption

Application-centric networking

Summary

10

Open Source Software Can Benefit You

Suggested pre-reading material

Open source and edge computing

Edge computing and OSS are intertwined

Do you really need to create that component?

Creating and supporting an open source program office (OSPO)

A software bill of materials is your friend

Using SBOMs to track software dependencies

The characteristics of a mature OSS project

How to nurture and assist projects you rely on

Responses to projects that stray from their mission

Common objections

Recommendations for contributing code

Let the cat out of the bag (Successfully open source your code and documentation)

Five options for open sourcing

What to open source

Summary

11

Recommendations and Best Practices

Suggested pre-reading material

Edge-native best practices as an outgrowth of cloud native

Pulling can be more secure than pushing

Application dependency resolution approaches

Deployment models for distributed edge applications compared

Making antifragile applications

Defining the terms

What are your current areas of weakness or vulnerability?

Properties of antifragile architectures

An ounce of prevention...

When things go wrong

What to avoid

Anti-patterns

How to recover, gracefully or not

Summary

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

Edge computing as we know it has rapidly evolved from its early days as a successor to the Internet of Things (IoT). Processing data at the source has become the ultimate goal because businesses and people expect analytics insights to be available and transaction results to be cleared in real time. That includes medical analysis, money transfers, payment receipts, video inferencing, and voice recognition. All this is possible because devices have become smart and the communication networks are able to deliver high speed and high throughput with low latencies to these new deployments. We have seen the rise of a new paradigm of application architecture specifically designed to run in domains that are not only constrained but also widely distributed. The IT architectures facilitating these advancements are unique because of the very nature of edge computing.

If the name of the game is to get insights quickly from all the data, we have to ensure there are applications able to do that, devices that can host the applications, and a network facilitating the information flow. That is the challenge solution architects face, which is who this book is primarily written for.

Drawing from real-world deployments in large enterprises and standards proposed by edge computing community organizations, this book emphasizes practical and tested-at-scale patterns and best practices used by leading companies worldwide. The book takes the reader from edge computing terminology and concepts to simple architectures, and eventually through end-to-end industry-specific approaches. It gives several points of view and rules of thumb and provides resources and recommendations for deeper thinking and research.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for IT professionals who have created solution architectures and are looking to extend their skills to the edge computing space. It should be valuable to VPs of IT infrastructure, enterprise architects, solution architects, and SRE professionals who are familiar with cloud computing and are interested in creating an edge reference architecture or a solution architecture for a particular industry use case. The book provides common patterns from solutions implemented by customers in industries ranging from retail to telcos to manufacturing.

What this book covers

Chapter 1

, Our View of Edge Computing, establishes a shared vernacular, describes infrastructure scenarios, and relies on industry conventions to ensure standard and widely compatible solutions.

Chapter 2

, Edge Architectural Components, covers four roles of components in edge architectures, benefits and limitations, and functional versus non-functional requirements.

Chapter 3

, Core Edge Architecture, covers managing and enabling sensors and smart devices using the Edge Device Hub pattern.

Chapter 4

, Network Edge Architecture, explores transitioning to software-defined network architectures to enable digital service provider scenarios.

Chapter 5

, End-to-End Edge Architecture, brings together devices, macro components, and applications to solve industry-specific challenges.

Chapter 6

, Data Has Weight and Inertia, explores the data-related considerations that edge-native solutions will need to address.

Chapter 7

, Automate to Achieve Scale, includes approaches that have worked at the extreme scales that edge deployments may encounter.

Chapter 8

, Monitoring and Observability, covers how to ensure that a deployed edge solution is performing as designed, despite unique challenges.

Chapter 9

, Connect Judiciously but Thoughtlessly, covers three connection scenarios and how application-centered approaches can address them.

Chapter 10

, Open Source Software Can Benefit You, explores strategies for ensuring that open source dependencies are used optimally, and when and how an enterprise should open source their solutions.

Chapter 11

, Recommendations and Best Practices, takes a wider view of the problem space and how thinking deeply about what you are doing and why can yield some surprising insights.

Images used in the book

You can find the images used in this book in the GitHub repository at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Edge-Computing-Patterns-for-Solution-Architects

.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: If you notice closely, it is an Open Horizon environment variable, namely HZN_DEVICE_ID.

A block of code is set as follows:

#!/bin/sh

# Simple edge service

while true; do

    echo HZN_DEVICE_ID says: Hello from Packt!

    sleep 5

done

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: The following code snippet is a very simple Hello World service that outputs Hello from Packt every five seconds.

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [email protected]

and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata

and fill in the form.

Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at [email protected]

with a link to the material.

If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit authors.packtpub.com

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Part 1:Overview of Edge Computing as a Problem Space

To build a shared understanding, we lay the groundwork and survey the territory in the first two chapters. Since the concepts and terminology in edge computing can be overloading, it’s important to explain exactly what is meant when we elucidate our concepts, problems, and solutions. The first two chapters in the book aim to provide clarity and a common foundation that will be built on in Parts 2 and 3. This part begins with how to think and talk about edge computing grounded in context. It then delves into the various components, describes their purposes, and shows how they relate to others and where they best fit.

This part has the following chapters:

Chapter 1

, Our View of Edge Computing

Chapter 2

, Edge Architectural Components

1

Our View of Edge Computing

One of the first challenges when discussing edge computing between IT professionals is establishing a shared vernacular. In the authors’ experience, professionals in this space differ in how they describe the goals, methods, available tools, and deployment targets/operating environments. We’ve also found that, due to experiences and even generational distinctions, some fundamental assumptions may be at play. By agreeing on a definition of terms at the outset, we avoid misunderstandings and talking past each other.

In this chapter, we will start by describing various edge computing scenarios from an infrastructure point of view, moving from cloud to far edge based on our experiences, research, and available de facto standards. Along the way, we compare and contrast different points of view that will affect architectural choices you can make, such as edge computing versus distributed computing and the network edge versus the enterprise edge.

We will rely on conventions covered in the Suggested pre-reading material section, such as State of the Edge annual reports and LF Edge whitepapers. By the end of the chapter, you should have the shared vocabulary and a wider perspective needed to engage in fruitful conversations on edge computing with software architects and other IT professionals.

In this chapter, we will cover the following main topics:

Speaking like an edge native

Which edge? Categorizing edges

Your computer or mine? Tactics for service deployment

Cloud-out versus edge-in

Introducing archetype patterns

Suggested pre-reading material

State of the Edge Report 2023 (The Linux Foundation)

(https://stateoftheedge.com/reports/state-of-the-edge-report-2023/

)

From DevOps to EdgeOps: A Vision for Edge Computing (Eclipse Foundation) (https://outreach.eclipse.foundation/edge-computing-edgeops-white-paper

)

Sharpening the Edge – Part 1 (LF Edge) (https://lfedge.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2023/12/LFEdge_Akraino_Whitepaper2_v1_PrePrint.pdf

)

Sharpening the Edge – Part 2 (LF Edge) (https://lfedge.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2023/12/LFEdgeTaxonomyWhitepaper_062222.pdf

)

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) overview (https://www.salesforce.com/saas/

)

Defining software deployment as days (https://dzone.com/articles/defining-day-2-operations

)

Speaking like an edge native

In this section, you will learn to articulate fundamental differences between the edge and the cloud. This impacts the available infrastructure, platforms, services, and application deployments. Additionally, you will be able to explain concisely what the edge is and what the field of edge computing does to both line-of-business (LOB) executives and other non-IT professionals. This includes being able to explain the value it can provide, as well as why this field is emerging at this point in time.

What is the edge?

The edge in edge computing is commonly used to describe the location where computing takes place. The name itself is meant to evoke a spot in a corner or by the wayside, and not in a central area, and actually refers to the very end of a communications network (the edge of the internet; see Figure 1.1). Thus, edge computing happens outside a cloud computing facility, and many times outside the four walls of a traditional data center (DC).

Edge computing