Arpit Joshipura, general manager of the Linux Foundation of Networks, predicted “edge computing will take over cloud computing” by 2025. IBM Services Global CTO and Vice President Bridget Karlin will not go so far as to say, “We will see an increase view of edge computing because of the very large number of instances compared to centralized cloud centers. “How many? IDC predicts that by 2025 there will be 55.9 billion connected devices. Leading Linux and cloud company Red Hat will be ready.
I: What is edge computing? Here’s the reason why the edge is important and where it’s going
Specifically, they will build on top of their Kubernetes-based hybrid cloud, with Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes. This will enable companies to address edge workloads, such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in industrial manufacturing. The combination of OpenShift and Cluster Management will enable you to easily manage and scale hybrid cloud and edge computing centers from a single point of view.
As Chris Wright explained in Red Hat’s CTO in a statement:
“The next generation of hybrid cloud applications is not limited to a business data center or even a public cloud deployment; instead, these innovations will exist at least in part at the edge of global networks, meeting consumer demands and solving business challenges with force.” “It comes from near-real-time processing and analytics. This future edge is driven by data, 5G, Linux containers, and cybernetics.”
These technologies will do this by helping organizations scale their infrastructure, to support the latency-sensitive applications of the edge. Specifically, Red Hat’s new edge capabilities include:
- Three-node cluster support within Red Hat OpenShift 4.5, allowing the full capabilities of corporate Kubernetes to carry to the edge of the network in a smaller footprint. Combining supervisors and workforce needs, downsizing clusters with three nodes do not compromise on capabilities, while still providing the Cybernetes’ full breadth of features.
- Manage thousands of edge sites with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Cybernetes along with core sites through a single consistent view across the hybrid cloud, making highly scalable edge architectures as manageable, consistent, compliant and secure as standard data center deployment.
- Develop the operating system to meet the demands of the edge with the continued leadership and innovation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), supported by the long history of the platform of performing remote workloads.
The just released OpenShift 4.5 comes with additional features. The most notable of these is that it now supports full stack automation VMware vSphere deployment. This makes it, Red Hat claims, “push” easy to deploy OpenShift on top of supported vSphere environments. What this means is that the administrator only needs to provide vSphere deployment data, and the installer provides all the resources it needs. This makes it much faster to set it up and then easier to manage and maintain.
OpenShift now includes production-ready OpenShift virtualization. Built from the KubeVirt open source project, it lets you develop, deploy and manage virtual machine (VM) applications alongside Kubernetes’ normal containers and serverless orchestration features. Many companies will find this marriage of containers and VMs useful.
Red Hat OpenShift 4.5 also makes life easier for developers.
- CodeReady Workspaces 2.2 enables remote development teams to deliver and share environments with the click of a button, allowing faster launches and interracial interactions with the best race.
- Container builds evolve in OpenShift with support for developer previews for Buildpacks and Kaniko in addition to Source-to-Image and Dockerfile builds via Buildah.
- Helmet 3.2 is now a core part of OpenShift with a web console that simplifies the work with charts and releases.
- Odo 2 is also included with OpenShift and offers a new way for developers to work on code. The command-line interface supports Kubernetes and OpenShift, open model for tools via a standard definition, and rapid iterative Java development with Quarkus.
- OpenShift Serverless support for Knative Services and Events enables developers to build serverless and event-driven applications that include Strimzi (Apache Kafka on Kubernetes) and service mesh.
- Finally, because continuous integration tools have become integrated for development teams, Red Hat has expanded Tekton’s functionality in OpenShift Pipelines and added OpenShift plugins for GitHub actions, Microsoft Azure DevOps, Jenkins, and GitLab runner support.
In addition, Red Hat continues to support a supported Kubernetes native continuous delivery (CD) and GitOps solution based on ArgoCD. ArgoCD, which was started by Intuit before becoming a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) -based, open-source project.
With ArgoCD, programmers can bring automatically deployed applications to their desired state specified by the Git version control system (VCS) or other VCSs. GitOps gives you full application transparency through VCS’s audit capabilities. It also gives you a straightforward reorientation mechanism on one or more Kubernetes clusters.
The new Cluster Management program provides organizations with tools to support containerized application installations across multiple clusters. It does this by providing a single view to manage your Kubernetes clusters. These can be based on Red Hat OpenShift clusters, or deployed on public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
It’s a lot to take in, but there’s a common theme: Cybernetes in general – and OpenShift in particular – are more useful across all the clouds from your server room to the edge.
