Processing on the 'Edge'
PlaceOS Edge Connect is a service for enabling device drivers to run on Cisco Edge devices in a similar manner to how drivers run on Core.
This allows drivers to exist on protected networks with the only egress going to a trusted PlaceOS instance. Where no incoming connections are desirable.
The service enables:
- Creation of multiple edges, each of which might represent a building or protected network segment
- This generates secrets that can be provided to edge core instances for authorizing connections to the edge connect service
- Assignment of modules to an edge
- Incoming connections from core
- Consistent hashing to distribute modules across cores assigned to a specific edge
- Core to proxy redis state up to the cloud
- Forward execute requests to the appropriate edge core and returns the result
- Forward updates to settings to modules on an edge
- Drivers transparently run on an edge - i.e. configuration determines if they connect to redis or proxy data via the core
Integrations
Cisco Edge Runners
Use Case
Edge Connect allows PlaceOS to run in a distributed mode where nodes are deployed to Cisco Edge Runners. An example of this might be each building with its own Edge Switch would have a PlaceOS Node deployed to every one of those switches.
This then prevents potential downtime in a case like a network trunk being lost between buildings, each building could operate independently without the master node. Once the connection is re-established it will update the master PlaceOS Node, which is deployed to a server.
This provides a broad redundancy scheme for geographically dispersed facilities and it also reduces the load on the master node as all local processing can be done on the Edge.