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.

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