Lessons learned from doing EdgeDevOps (GitOps) in the bush, air and underwater - API Days Australia 2022

API Days 2022 - 15th September 2022 (Video recording https://youtu.be/PYpHWBQapSs/)

Dasith Wijesiriwardena
Juan Burckhardt
Jason Goodsell
Suganya Srinivasan

It is not an exaggeration to say that most modern systems that teams build are running on the cloud in a distributed architecture. There are some well-known successful practices around DevOps for these cloud native solutions as well. But what happens when you want to use the same workflows to deploy and run on the edge where connectivity might be intermittent or not available (air gapped systems)? How do we run Kubernetes on the edge and use our favourite GitOps workflows? In this talk we will talk about some of the techniques and practices we have been using to build and run workloads on Azure Edge and other edge devices. During this talk you will discover the challenges faced running Kubernetes on the edge and some practical solutions, starting off from your development environment, to continuously having your code deployed and running on a fleet of devices in an automated way regardless if it's a mobile platform, drone or a submarine.

Transcript

1. Lessons Learned From Doing EdgeDevOps
   in The Bush, Air and Underwater
   14-15 Sep 2022
   Dasith Wijesiriwardena
   Juan Burckhardt
   Jason Goodsell
   Suganya Srinivasan
   

   View Slide

2. HELLO!
   Jason
   Commercial Software
   Engineering
   Dasith
   Juan
   Suganya
   @dasiths
   https://dasith.me
   @jsburckhardt
   

   View Slide

3. Partially Connected Scenarios
   Introduction to EdgeDevOps
   Agenda
   Disconnected Scenarios
   Development Workflow
   Discovery and Networking
   

   View Slide

4. Introduction to
   EdgeDevOps
   

   View Slide

5. EdgeDevOps
   ▪ What is it? Just DevOps but for the “edge.”
   ▪ Why can’t we do what we normally do?
   Because edge devices are “special”
   ▪ Constraints (i.e. network connectivity, latency)
   ▪ There are 1..n devices (potentially with different versions)
   ▪ More like choreography than orchestration
   

   View Slide

6. Looking at the
   Development Workflow
   

   View Slide

7. Inner-Development Loop
   Problem
   How do you ensure everyone on the team has the
   same development environment?
   

   View Slide

8. Inner-Development Loop
   Solution
   ▪ DevContainers (VS Code)
   ▪ GitHub CodeSpaces
   

   View Slide

9. What Are DevContainers?
   ▪ Standardised development environment
   ▪ Docker container
   ▪ Contains common tools
   ▪ Everything needed for development
   ▪ Transportable
   ▪ Ability to run in CI/CD pipeline
   

   View Slide

10. Complexity with
    Deploying to The Edge
    

    View Slide

11. Evolution of “Compute”
    

    View Slide

12. Our EdgeDevOps Flow
    

    View Slide

13. Our EdgeDevOps Flow
    

    View Slide

14. Edge Devices That Are
    Partially Connected
    

    View Slide

15. Sample Environment
    

    View Slide

16. Partially Connected Scenario
    

    View Slide

17. Partially Connected Scenario
    

    View Slide

18. Partially Connected Scenario
    

    View Slide

19. Partially Connected Scenario
    

    View Slide

20. Partially Connected Scenario
    

    View Slide

21. Partially Connected Scenario
    

    View Slide

22. Partially Connected Scenario
    Features:
    ▪ Cache on the base station
    ▪ Leaf discoverability (ZeroConfig network)
    ▪ Leaf Bootstrap
    

    View Slide

23. Edge Devices That Are
    Disconnected
    

    View Slide

24. Sample Air Gapped Environment
    

    View Slide

25. Sample Air Gapped Environment
    

    View Slide

26. Sample Air Gapped Environment
    

    View Slide

27. Sample Air Gapped Environment
    

    View Slide

28. Zarf is Not a Silver Bullet !
    Challenges:
    ▪ Not Prod ready
    ▪ Debugging
    ▪ Version control
    ▪ Big binaries
    ▪ Restricts k8s
    ▪ Validation/Encryption
    Pros:
    ▪ Big community
    ▪ DoD is using it
    ▪ Good docs
    ▪ K8S native
    ▪ Single package
    

    View Slide

29. For Edge Devices
    Zero Config Networking
    

    View Slide

30. ZeroConfig Networking
    ▪ Set of technologies that automatically create a usable computer
    network.
    ▪ Does not require manual operator intervention or special
    configuration servers (i.e. DHCP).
    ▪ Automatically … assign IP addresses, resolve hostnames, and
    locate services.
    ▪ UDP Broadcast (Query+Response pattern)
    ▪ Multicast DNS (mDNS)
    ▪ DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD)
    

    View Slide

31. Wrapping Up
    ▪ DevContainers (Inner-DevLoop)
    ▪ Flux (GitOps)
    ▪ Harbor (Container Image Cache)
    ▪ GitEA (Git Repo Cache)
    ▪ Zarf (Packaging)
    ▪ mDNS, DNS-SD (Discoverability)
    

    View Slide

32. Any questions?
    THANKS!
    @dasiths
    dasith.me
    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/asia/sri-lanka/
    @jsburckhardt
    burckman.com
    

    View Slide

33. Presentation template designed by powerpointify.com
    Special thanks to all people who made and shared these awesome resources for free:
    CREDITS
    Photographs by unsplash.com
    Free Fonts used:
    https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/oswald
    @dasiths
    

    View Slide