On September 16th, Distributed Cloud | 2021 Global Distributed Cloud Conference Shanghai Station was grandly held. Under the unremitting evangelization of the Global Distributed Cloud Conference, the cloud computing industry has paid more and more attention to distributed cloud, represented by the members of the Global Distributed Cloud Alliance, a large number of distributed cloud technologies and practical achievements have emerged, laying a solid foundation for the development of distributed cloud computing.
The 2021 Global Distributed Cloud Conference adds another powerful impetus to the development of distributed cloud computing, and this conference has four major forums: distributed cloud theme report, edge cloud forum, cloud native thematic forum, and distributed database forum, focusing on distributed cloud, edge computing power, cloud native, distributed architecture and other technologies and practices. The Global Distributed Cloud Alliance, together with Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Google Cloud, ZTE, JD Cloud, Ammann Cloud, Netxin Technology and other top distributed cloud technology service providers at home and abroad, talked about the new trend of distributed cloud innovation, sought a new future for cloud computing reform, and shared the new dividends of distributed cloud computing!
At the Edge Cloud Forum held on the afternoon of September 16, Sun Min, Marketing Director of Intel Corporation and core maintainer of edgeX China project, delivered a keynote speech entitled "EdgeX Open Source Ecosystem, Leading Intelligent Edge Innovation". He mainly talked about the background and trend of edge computing, the introduction and application cases of EdgeX Foundry, and the EdgeX Foundry Chinese community and Intel open edge initiative and cooperation model.
The background and trends of edge computing
The development of the Internet of Things has been more than 20 years, and the development of cloud computing has also been more than 10 years. The early IoT structure was simple, connecting sensors to the cloud through a single protocol (MQTT) to implement a property management platform. Based on the simple structure, the Internet of Things is mostly a low-rate, point-like data application when deployed in the early stage.
In the era of industrial Internet, the demand for the Internet of Things in industrial manufacturing has increased, and a single protocol cannot meet the demand, at this time, multi-protocol gateways have come into being. As a transformation device, the multi-protocol gateway connects multiple IoT peripherals of different protocols, converts them to protocols, and then connects to the cloud application platform through the network and MQTT protocol. This is the prototype of the edge computing architecture.
Today, there are different protocols of Internet of Things peripherals on the terminal side, including industrial protocols, video protocols, BAcnet, GPS, virtual devices, etc., and there are also different cloud service providers corresponding to different access protocols in the cloud, which is a great challenge for connecting the gateways at both ends. At this point, the edge computing architecture was introduced.
The edge computing architecture includes functions such as multi-protocol transformation, data storage, resource orchestration, and system management. The architecture is also a software architecture defined by EdgeX Foundry, and its purpose is to help users build a cloud-based edge computing platform that enables simple and rapid Deployment of the Internet of Things.
Introduction and application examples of EdgeX Foundry
(EdgeX Foundry)
The main points about EdgeX Foundry can be summarized into four points:
1) For IoT edge computing.
2) Used for open source, vendor affiliation.
3) Cloud-native microservices architecture.
4) Loosely coupled software architecture.
The most prominent feature of EdgeX Foundry is the integration of edge workloads, including hardware consolidation and data consolidation, which is also the charm of edge computing.
EdgeX Foundry is a loosely coupled microservices architecture that can be flexibly deployed in every part of the cloud, edge, and end to achieve layered edge computing.
(Edge AI+IOT mechanism diagram)
In recent years, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and AI, the demand for edge AI has also soared, and Intel has launched the reference architecture of EdgeX+ AI in conjunction with global ecosystem partners. This architecture is based on Intel's CPU, GPU, etc. to deploy some Dockers, and artificial intelligence can be deployed in EdgeX, as well as computer vision applications and user interface applications. The overall business process of the architecture is based on EdgeX collecting camera data on all connected EdgeX servers, and then pushing it into the container of edge AI, and then customizing the APP of local industry applications based on these data, so that the entire set of edge system deployment is completed.
Case 1: All-in-One digital retail stores
This example is the integration of multiple chimney-style data silos of peripherals and sensor systems in retail stores into all-in-one store edge nodes, edgeX Foundry provides unified access, data and application integration, and flexible cloud migration capabilities.
Case 2: Data Center Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction and Sustainability
This case is Intel, Quarkdata, VMware working together to create a joint technology solution. First, the dynamic ring in the data center is integrated with the IT operation and maintenance system to form a unified data platform, and then the EdgeX Foundry is used to collect real-time data on power supply, cooling and environment, and integrate with historical data. Based on AI/ML technology analysis, it predicts future electricity load and cooling demand, and dynamically adjusts the optimal configuration.
EdgeX Foundry Chinese community and Intel Open Edge initiatives and collaboration models
EdgeX Foundry Chinese community
EdgeX Foundry's global downloads and commercial deployments exceeded 8 million and 600,000 respectively, and during the epidemic, China's EdgeXFoundry was far more used than the United States, becoming the largest user community.
In order to adapt to the development needs of China, EdgeX Foundry set up a special EdgeX Chinese community in early 2020, which is jointly maintained by Intel and VMware. The community primarily serves developers and partners in China.
Intel Open Edge Initiative and Partnership Model
(Open Edge Initiative Ecosystem Diagram)
Bottom layer: manufacturers of various sensors and peripherals, manufacturers of cameras, production of temperature and humidity, production of other controllers;
Middle tier: Edge Node
Top-level: Docker containers, management & orchestration, and deployment of video analytics services, EdgeX, computer vision applications, user interface applications, and more
(Open Retail Reference Architecture Diagram)
On the left is the end, on the right is the cloud, and in the middle there are different architectures based on containers and virtual machines.