How To Accelerate Edge Application Deployment at Scale
Organizations often struggle with deploying and managing Internet of Things (IoT) applications like AWS Greengrass across distributed devices at the edge, leading to inefficient manual processes and inconsistent configurations. Without a centralized solution, organizations face inefficient deployments, inconsistent configurations, monitoring challenges, increased costs and delays in rolling out new features.
This problem is typically faced by organizations with distributed operations and a need to deploy and manage IoT solutions across multiple locations or a large number of devices. The roles facing this problem would likely be IT and operational technology (OT) personnel responsible for deploying and maintaining edge infrastructure and applications.
These organizations often must deal with inefficient and time-consuming manual deployments and management, difficulty in maintaining consistency across a large number of devices, challenges in monitoring the health and status of edge applications, increased operational costs and potential delays in rolling out new features or updates.
Demo Overview
This demo addresses the challenges of deploying and managing edge applications at scale, specifically AWS Greengrass and AWS SiteWise, across a potentially substantial number of distributed edge devices. It highlights the need for centralized orchestration and management of these devices and applications.
AWS Greengrass “is an open source edge runtime and cloud service for building, deploying and managing device software,” whereas AWS SiteWise collects data from industrial IoT equipment at scale.
This demo showcases how ZEDEDA, a centralized edge orchestration and management platform, streamlines edge application management for organizations seeking to efficiently manage their edge infrastructure. The platform provides centralized management at scale, flexibility in organizing and managing edge deployments, a global marketplace and support for local application images, offering a wide range of deployment options.
Watch the full demo to see how a centralized edge orchestration and management platform can accelerate your edge application deployments.
Prerequisites
To execute this demo, several technical prerequisites are necessary:
- Edge devices running EVE-OS, an open source, Linux-based operating system for distributed edge computing (Intel NUC i7 and Advantech UNO 348).
- A ZEDEDA tenant account.
- An AWS account for deploying Greengrass and SiteWise.
- Ubuntu QCOW2 imageContainer images (QCO images).
- Cloud-init scripts for automated configuration.
The demo setup involves:
- Navigating the ZEDEDA UI (dashboard, administration, marketplace).
- Deploying an Ubuntu image with Greengrass.
- Configuring deployment by selecting a project and edge nodes.
- Setting the deployment description and prefix.
- Modifying AWS keys, region and Greengrass settings.
- Initiating and monitoring deployment status.
- Displaying a cloud-init script for Greengrass.
- Accessing the logs of a deployed Greengrass instance.
Key Capabilities in the Demo
The key technical features in the demo include:
- Centralized and simplified deployment: The user-friendly cloud interface allows deploying edge applications like AWS Greengrass to multiple edge devices simultaneously.
- Automation of application deployment and configuration: The use of cloud-init scripts and customizable variables reduces manual intervention.
- Real-time monitoring and visibility: The platform’s dashboard and detailed logs offer real-time insights into the status of edge nodes and deployed applications.
The demo showcases the initiation and progression of the Greengrass deployment process and displays successful logs of a prior deployment, indicating successful Greengrass configuration.
How the Technology Works
The ZEDEDA Edge Computing Platform is made up of three components: the open source EVE-OS, the ZEDEDA Cloud controller and the Marketplace for managing workloads to deploy to the edge. This provides a centralized cloud interface for deploying and managing edge node applications. The platform allows users to manage devices based on project, location or use case. Deployment is simplified via the marketplace and cloud-init scripts. The dashboard provides a real-time overview of deployment status, errors and device locations.
The platform integrates with AWS IoT services, specifically Greengrass and SiteWise. It supports virtual machines (VMs) and containers and handles network configurations, including IPv4, IPv6, static IP, DHCP, wireless and proxy settings. Cloud-init scripts automate the deployment of applications like Greengrass.
Benefits of This Approach
This solution benefits organizations with distributed operations that need to deploy and manage IoT solutions across multiple locations or a large number of devices. This includes sectors like industrial IoT, manufacturing, automotive, transportation, agriculture, energy (oil and gas) and retail.
Immediate benefits for organizations adopting an edge computing platform include:
- Simplified and faster deployment of edge applications.
- Centralized visibility and control over distributed edge infrastructure.
- Reduced manual effort and potential for errors through automation.
- Easier onboarding of new devices and applications.
Long-term benefits include:
- Scalability for growing edge deployments.
- Consistent application deployments and configurations across a large fleet of devices.
- Improved security posture through centralized control and monitoring.
- Simplified life cycle management of edge applications.
- Increased agility in deploying and managing edge-based solutions.
- Vendor independence due to the platform’s flexible support for various hardware.
Use Cases
This demo is relevant for any company or industry that needs to deploy distributed edge applications at scale, including:
- Predictive maintenance
- Firmware updates
- Network services
- Automotive
- Shipping/logistics
- Agriculture
ZEDEDA offers centralized management at scale, flexibility in organizing deployments, a global marketplace and support for local application images, offering a wide range of deployment options and security features. The platform can also operate in air-gapped and intermittent connectivity environments.
