[Starlingx-discuss] Edge Computing Use Case, Deployment Advice Needed

[Arce Moreno, Abraham]

> I added some points/questions inline.

Thanks Curtis for your time!

> > We are integrating this demo in our spare time to ramp up in cloud
> > technologies and one of its imperatives is a working solution. It started as a use
> > case proposal around unmanned aerial systems [0], then decided to avoid some
> > of the complexity involved in flying the drones, and finally landed it as a use case
> > around home automation / smart cities at the network edge.

> First off, I'd like to let people know that we are planning on doing some kind of
> "edge" proof-of-concept with Packet.com resources, so perhaps the project you
> discuss could fit in with that. I'm sure we'll chat about it at some point here.
> 
> At the next TSC meeting we'll discuss how to get the packet projects off the
> ground, so feel free to attend. :)

Awesome! We will be paying attention to community communications about this topic.

> > 	This demo has currently integrated the following acceleration resources:
> > 	- GPU
> > 	- VPU (Movidius NCS)

> I would not expect a USB device like the Movidius NCS to be available in most
> STX deployments, but maybe?

Maybe, Movidius NCS seems to be one of one those exploration paths to offload some workloads, and where budget could make a difference in comparison with FPGAs.

> > [ StarlingX Deployment ] [ Offload ]
> > What would be the preferred way to deploy this use case proposal in
> > StarlingX? We understand the following options are available including its
> > preference:
> > 
> > 1. Via Kubernetes (Not Preferred)
> > 2. Via Virtual Machine (Preferred)
> > 3. Via Bare Metal (Preferred)
> > 
> > Are the above options and their preference, correct? If not, can you
> > please give us some hints behind your answer.

> From my standpoint, I think #3 would be the least common option. #2 would be
> a good place to start, but I don't think #1 is "not preferred", I guess it depends
> on where these preferences are coming from.

Understood, we think it is worth to try option 2 initially at least for the core applications of the use case.

> > [ StarlingX Deployment ] [ Provisioning ]
> > 
> > As mentioned at the beginning, another of our imperatives, is to
> > exercise zero touch provisioning.
> > 
> > Does it makes sense to split the provisioning in 2 parts based in the
> > required time for the demo components to live?
> > 
> >   - The core applications 100% uptime
> >   - Services on demand / 100 uptime in some cases

> By zero touch provisioning do you just mean automation using IaaS APIs? eg.
> the docker compose file you link to? Or something else?

We understand the term from its definition but that "something else" is not in our knowledge yet. From our current understanding, that zero touch provisioning will allow us to deploy with one single instruction:

- The core applications part of the use case (e.g. access to the different dashboards)
- The services part of the use case: the start and stop of X service (e.g. face recognition, object recognition, etc.) for each of the wanted video streams.

We will appreciate if you can share any online resource where we can learn more about this zero touch concept in a practical way (e.g. whitepaper, use case) so we can land into our use case.

Again, thank you Curtis for your time and help to answer our questions.