Objectives

1. Reduce friction to deployment of LF Edge Templates
2. Provide a centralized location for all deployable Templates

Definition

• Template = software + configuration

Concept

• Provide (potential hierarchy of) recipes for deployment of templates
  • For Kubernetes based projects (like Akraino) this could be a set of Helm charts or k8s manifests
  • For other container based projects (which don't necessarily have K8S) this could be docker-compose
  • For bare-metal deployments, we are open to suggestions on potential solutions
• Have a web-page (per template) which consolidates these along with simple instructions and potential parameters

Examples

• Work in progress here: https://github.com/ericvh/lfedge-catalog-proposal
• artifacthub.io : maintains a catalog of public helm charts and has a concept of organizations (so we could host under an LFEdge organization there)
  • Organizational View Example: https://artifacthub.io/packages/search?org=smarter&sort=relevance&page=1
  • Project View Example: https://artifacthub.io/packages/helm/device-manager/smarter-device-manager
  • We could potentially augment descriptions with badges (Cassini Ready, etc.)
• hub.balena.io: has a similar structure to the above, but actually couples a container recipe with a platform to provide a burnable sdcard
• rancher provides a git repository of recipes: https://github.com/rancher/community-catalog which are used by their platform to provide catalog based installation
• portal.sagecontinuum.org maintains a catalog of edge deployable applications for their smarter-cities project
• portainer.io maintains git repositories of templates which are then deployable using their portainer.io tool (including the community edition)

Requirements

• For helm appropriate projects (those that use kubernetes as a base layer)
  • helm-ifying (as necessary) template components
  • umbrella helm which deploys those components
  • role-designation methodology for multi-node blueprints (or even to specify cloud-side versus edge-side)
  • host on a catalog platform
• For other projects
  • TBD - options include using things like portainer.io or just docker-compose, but unaware of a artifacthub.io equivalent for those so maybe just github/gitlab?

Proposal

• Build a simple example (hello-$CONFIGVARIABLE) which can be packaged using the various options and built into the various catalog options (by 10/17/22)
• Prototype requirements with a single template (strawman: Akraino smarter cities blueprint) and then broaden to all Akraino blueprints to evaluate