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· 3 min read

In KubeEdge v1.19, we introduced a new version of the KubeEdge Dashboard. This version of KubeEdge Dashboard is built with the Next.js framework and the MUI component library to offer better performance. Meanwhile, we have optimized and enhanced several modules of the KubeEdge Dashboard, including the device management and device model management modules.

In this article, we will introduce how to deploy and use the KubeEdge Dashboard.

Environment Pre-requisites

We can obtain the source code of KubeEdge Dashboard from the KubeEdge Dashboard GitHub repository. Before building and deploying KubeEdge Dashboard, please ensure the following environment is set up:

  • KubeEdge Cluster: Please refer to the KubeEdge official documentation to set up a KubeEdge cluster. KubeEdge Dashboard requires KubeEdge v1.15 or later versions.
  • Node.js: Install Node.js on your system, it is recommended to use Node.js v18 or later versions.
  • Node.js Package Manager: Install a Node.js package manager, such as npm, yarn, or pnpm.

Building and Deploying

Once the environment is set up and the KubeEdge Dashboard source code has been downloaded, we can use the Node.js package manager to start the KubeEdge Dashboard. In the following instructions, we will use pnpm as the example to show how to install dependencies and run KubeEdge Dashboard.

First of all, we need to install the dependencies:

pnpm install

KubeEdge Dashboard interacts with KubeEdge resources via the Kubernetes API. Therefore, we need to set the API_SERVER environment variable to specify the API Server address:

pnpm run build
API_SERVER=https://192.168.33.129:6443 pnpm run start

After starting KubeEdge Dashboard, open http://localhost:3000 in your browser to access the dashboard.

For the KubeEdge cluster with self-signed certificates, we need to set the NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 environment variable to bypass certificate verification:

NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 API_SERVER=<api-server> pnpm run start

Creating a Login Token

To authenticate with KubeEdge Dashboard, we need to create a token for login. The following instructions show how to create a service account dashboard-user in the kube-system namespace and generate a token for authentication.

First, we need to create a service account in the Kubernetes cluster:

kubectl create serviceaccount dashboard-user -n kube-system

To grant permissions to the service account, we need to create a cluster role binding that associates the service account with a cluster role. Kubernetes provides some built-in cluster roles, such as cluster-admin, which has access to all resources in the cluster. We can also refer to the Kubernetes documentation to create a custom cluster role if needed.

kubectl create clusterrolebinding dashboard-user-binding --clusterrole=cluster-admin --serviceaccount=kube-system:dashboard-user -n kube-system

Since Kubernetes v1.24, secrets for service accounts are no longer created automatically. We need to create an associated token by the kubectl create token command. The lifetime of the token will be determined by the server automatically, and we can specify the lifetime of the token by the --duration option.

kubectl create token dashboard-user -n kube-system

For Kubernetes v1.23 and earlier versions, Kubernetes automatically creates a secret for the service account. We can retrieve the secret by the kubectl describe secret command:

kubectl describe secret -n kube-system $(kubectl get secret -n kube-system | grep dashboard-user | awk '{print $1}')

Conclusion

With KubeEdge Dashboard, we can more easily manage KubeEdge resources such as edge applications and devices. We will continue to enhance and optimize the KubeEdge Dashboard and user experience in future releases. We also welcome feedback and suggestions from the community.

For more information on KubeEdge Dashboard, please refer to the KubeEdge Dashboard GitHub repository.

· 4 min read

On Oct 28, 2024, KubeEdge released v1.19. The new release introduces several new features for edge nodes and devices, along with a completely revamped Dashboard.

1.19 What's New

Release Highlights

Support Edge Nodes Report Event

Kubernetes Event serve as a report of an event somewhere in the cluster, reflecting status changes of cluster resources such as Nodes and Pods. In v1.19, EdgeCore supports reporting events to cloud, allowing users to directly access the status of edge nodes or Pods in the cloud via kubectl get events or kubectl describe {resource_type} {resource_name}.

This feature is disabled by default in v1.19. To enable it, execute --set modules.edged.reportEvent=true when install EdgeCore with keadm or modify the EdgeCore configuration file and then restart EdgeCore.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5722, #5811)

Support OTA(Over-The-Air) Upgrades for Edge Nodes

On the basis of NodeUpgradeJob upgrade, we add the edge node confirmation card point and the validation of the image digest. The card point confirmation allows the node upgrade to be delivered to the edge side, and the upgrade can be performed only after the user is confirmed. Image digest validation can ensure that the kubeedge/installation-pacakge image to be upgraded is secure and reliable at the edge side.

In v1.19, we can use spec.imageDigestGatter in NodeUpgradeJob to define how to get the image digest. The value to directly define the digest, The registryAPI to get the mirror digest via registry v2 API, both are mutually exclusive. If none is configured, the image digest is not verified during the upgrade.

We can also use spec.requireConfirmation to configure requireConfirmation for NodeUpgradeJob to determine whether we want to confirm at the edge side.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5589, #5761, #5863)

Mapper Supports Device Data Writing

In v1.19, we add the ability to write device data in Mapper-Framework. User can use device methods through the API provided by Mapper and complete data writing to device properties.

  • Device method API

A new definition of device methods is added in new release. Users can define device methods in the device-instance file that can be called by the outside world in device. Through device methods, users can control and write data to device properties.

  • Device data writing

In v1.19, the Mapper API capability is improved and a new device method interface is added. The user can use the relevant interface to obtain all the device methods contained in a device, as well as the calling command of the device method. Through the returned calling command, user can create a device write request to write data to device.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5662, #5902)

Add OpenTelemetry to Mapper-framework

In v1.19, we add the OpenTelemetry observability framework to mapper data plane, which can encapsulate device data and push data to multiple types of applications or databases. This feature can enhance the mapper data plane's ability to push device data.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5628)

A New Release of KubeEdge Dashboard

Based on previous Dashboard release, we have refactored the KubeEdge Dashboard using the more popular frameworks Next.js and MUI. In the new release, we rewrote and optimized around 60 pages and components, reducing about 70% of redundant code. We also upgraded the KubeEdge and native Kubernetes APIs to the latest version to maintain compatibility and added TypeScript definitions for the APIs.

Refer to the link for more details.(#29)

Important Steps before Upgrading

  • In the next release (v1.20), the default value for the EdgeCore configuration option edged.rootDirectory will change from /var/lib/edged to /var/lib/kubelet. If you wish to continue using the original path, you can set --set edged.rootDirectory=/var/lib/edged when installing EdgeCore with keadm.

  • In v1.19, please use --kubeedge-version to specify the version when installing KubeEdge with keadm, --profile version is no longer supported.

· 10 min read

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – October 15, 2024 – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, announced the graduation of KubeEdge.

We would like to thank our TOC sponsors Cathy Zhang and Lin Sun, and everyone who has collaborated over the past six years on KubeEdge’s design, development, and deployment.

KubeEdge is an open source edge computing project built on Kubernetes, which expands the cloud native ecosystem to scenarios and industries outside of data centers. It extends Kubernetes’ native container orchestration and scheduling capabilities to the edge and provides capabilities such as edge application management, cloud-edge metadata synchronization, and edge IoT device management.

KubeEdge was open sourced by Huawei Cloud in November 2018. It was accepted as the first cloud native edge project in the CNCF Sandbox project in 2019 and was promoted to an incubating project in September 2020.

Since joining CNCF, the project team has grown to include maintainers from 15 organizations and has attracted over 1,600 contributors from more than 35 countries and 110 organizations. Contributing organizations include Huawei Cloud, DaoCloud, HarmonyCloud, China Unicom, Inovex, ARM, QingCloud Technology, BoCloud, China Mobile, Inspur, Sony, China Telecom, Zhejiang Lab, SEL Laboratory of Zhejiang University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

“KubeEdge started with a vision to extend cloud native technology to the edge and foster a robust edge-cloud computing ecosystem. Today, it has been adopted across numerous innovative and unforeseen fields. This achievement is a testament to the incredible creativity and dedication of our contributors, whose efforts have driven the project’s success,” said Kevin Wang and Yin Ding, KubeEdge TSC members. “Graduation marks a new beginning, and we are excited to explore even greater possibilities for the entire cloud native ecosystem.”

KubeEdge has been widely applied in various industries, including CDN, intelligent transportation, smart energy, smart retail, smart parks, automobiles, intelligent logistics, finance, power, and blockchain. It has been deployed in industry-leading projects such as the largest cloud native cloud-edge collaborative highway toll station management project, the first cloud native satellite-ground collaborative satellite, the first cloud native electric vehicle, and more.

“Kubernetes was born through usage across massive data centers but has evolved, just like Linux, for new environments and has become a leading platform in edge computing,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, CNCF. “KubeEdge has been at the forefront of this transformation, bringing Kubernetes into new frontiers from electric cars to outer space. We look forward to seeing where the KubeEdge project goes next as a graduate project.”

Supporting Quotes:

Huawei

“Since it was open sourced, KubeEdge has received the attention and support of industry partners and end users. It has achieved breakthrough innovative practices in industry fields such as intelligent transportation, finance, energy, electric vehicles, robotics, and logistics. The graduation of KubeEdge will further promote the cloud native digital transformation of enterprises and release greater industrial value. As a pioneer and popularizer of cloud native technology, Huawei Cloud will continue to cooperate with CNCF and the community in the future to jointly promote the development of the cloud native industry.”

– Bruno Zhang, CTO, Huawei Cloud

DaoCloud

“The graduation of KubeEdge marks a significant milestone in the field of Cloud Native Edge computing. As the official first edge computing project of CNCF, KubeEdge provides robust computing and management support for resource-constrained edge devices, and its graduation signifies the technological maturity and industry recognition of Cloud Native Edge computing. Since the launch of the KubeEdge project, the DaoCloud team has actively participated, and contributed our extensive expertise on project governance/core tech development and customer promotion in manufacturing and retail sectors. In the future, we will continue to collaborate with the KubeEdge community to provide more flexible, secure, and efficient solutions to global enterprises and developers, and shape a new era of smart edges.”

– Hongbing Zhang, COO, DaoCloud

HarmonyCloud

“Congratulations on the successful graduation of KubeEdge open source project! As a member of KubeEdge Technical Steering Committee (TSC) team, it has been a pleasure to witness the journey of KubeEdge from incubation to graduation. From discovery, trial use and issue raising, pull request raising, feature raising, application and promotion, KubeEdge is an important component in the core technology framework of the cloud edge computing team to provide customers with edge computing product delivery. We have edge computing landing cases in telecommunication, finance, transportation, energy, bridges, logistics, military and other fields. KubeEdge has always kept its design clean and architecture clear, thanks to every open source contributor, bringing great flexibility to applications across the edge computing industry. In the future, HarmonyCloud will also continuously participate in the KubeEdge community and jointly promote the development of the cloud native edge computing industry to release the ubiquitous value of cloud native!”

– Huan Wei, Senior Director & Head of Edge Computing, HarmonyCloud

QingCloud

“Since it was open sourced, KubeEdge has led the trend of cloud native edge computing with its unique architecture, exerting huge influence and demonstration effect. While promoting the application of cloud native technology, it also promotes the development of edge computing. With the adoption of increasingly heavyweight industry users and the participation of numerous community contributors worldwide, it is an honor to witness the entire process of KubeEdge from incubation to graduation as a member of the KubeEdge Technical Steering Committee (TSC). Congratulations to the KubeEdge project on becoming the first edge computing project to graduate from CNCF! As the core maintainer of KubeSphere, while deeply participating in the KubeEdge project, QingCloud Technology has also been actively promoting the implementation of KubeEdge in various industries. We aim to promote the development of edge computing together with many domestic and foreign counterparts and community users!”

– Benjamin Huo, Lead of Observability and Edge Computing, QingCloud

ByteDance

“It is a great pleasure to witness the graduation of KubeEdge from CNCF. This milestone not only embodies the collective efforts of the community but also signals that cloud native edge computing has entered a new stage of maturity. In the future, we will continue to closely cooperate with global developers and partners to promote the innovation and application of edge computing technology and accelerate the digital transformation of various industries.”

– Tina Tsou, KubeEdge Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Member, ByteDance

BoCloud

“KubeEdge is the longest-lasting and most active project of edge computing architecture software. It has an extremely profound influence on the industry and has been widely adopted in the intelligent transformation of industries such as industry, transportation, and equipment manufacturing, making positive contributions to the promotion of the intelligent manufacturing plan. The KubeEdge community has attracted many open source contributors and cooperation projects with an active and open attitude. The open source edge network and storage components such as FabEdge and Carina from BoCloud have achieved good compatibility and project applications, and multiple project practices of cloud-edge-end AI model transfer, model conversion and loading have been implemented. The graduation of KubeEdge indicates the arrival of the mature stage of edge computing technology and the period of rapid industrial development. It is believed that the project will definitely gain more practical applications in the future. BoCloud is willing to jointly promote industrialization development with the project community and support the implementation of more scenarios.”

– Ji Cui, Vice President, BoCloud

Sony

“It is the most exciting news to see the graduation of KubeEdge from CNCF, which shouts out production-ready Kubernetes edge solutions. KubeEdge extends the orchestration capability down to edge environments to provide unified cluster management and sophisticated edge-specific features.

We are confident to see KubeEdge be applied to many more use cases in the near future, especially for edge computing such as robotics distributed systems, and AI/ML application deployment at edge. Not only development but also community engagement and growth are really important for open source based activity. KubeEdge also has been doing great work to encourage the developers and users to be engaged in the community, that really works to design the KubeEdge that can support broad use cases and requirements at edge environment and business logics. We will continue to engage and support KubeEdge development and community.”

– Tomoya FUjita, Software Engineer, Sony Corporation of America

NIO

“As a platform specifically developed for cloud-edge collaboration, KubeEdge can effectively address the challenges such as computing resource limited, a vast number of edge nodes, and differences in operating environments that the automotive field faces when applying the cloud native technology stack. After extensive research work, we have built NIO’s entire vehicle-cloud collaboration platform with KubeEdge as the core and used it in mass-produced vehicle models for the first time, bringing significant improvements in development and delivery efficiency, team collaboration, and so on. It will also achieve ultra-large-scale vehicle management. Hereby, we congratulate KubeEdge on its graduation. We also look forward to having deeper cooperation with the community, continuing to promote the development of the KubeEdge community, and continuously building innovative applications of cloud native solutions in the revolutionary EV field.”

– Saint Jiang, Architect of Digital Systems, Strategic New Business, NlO

Zeblok

“With KubeEdge’s graduation from CNCF, the edge computing landscape reaches a new frontier. At Zeblok Computational Inc., we’re thrilled to incorporate KubeEdge into our Ai-MicroCloud, delivering cutting-edge AI capabilities directly to the edge. This synergy drives innovation where real-time intelligence matters most.”– Vikarna Tathe, Platform Engineering Lead, Zeblok Computational Inc.

OEHI

“KubeEdge officially reaching the next level of maturity at CNCF is a strong recognition of the successful development efforts around this technology. The Open Edge and HPC Initiative (OEHI) strongly believes in the potential of KubeEdge as a key element of upcoming compute continuum infrastructures. To train people for this new paradigm of computing infrastructure design, OEHI co-organised a tutorial at ISC HPC 2024 where participants could get first-hand experience with KubeEdge. In the future, we will continue to promote this technology.”

– Dirk Pleiter, Chair, OEHI

SF Technology

“The graduation of the KubeEdge is exciting. It is a rising star in the field of cloud native edge computing. SF Technology has been deeply involved in the logistics field for many years. KubeEdge is like a powerful assistant for us to move towards intelligence. From the efficient operation of logistics sorting to the full life cycle processing of transportation links, the edge computing capabilities provided by KubeEdge help us create a smarter and more efficient logistics system. In its development process, we have witnessed its growth and transformation, and we have also actively integrated it into our business scenarios. SF Technology looks forward to walking hand in hand with KubeEdge and continuously exploring new possibilities in the future, pushing the intelligence of the logistics industry to a new height and allowing edge computing to play a greater value in the circulation of every package.”

– Panggang Cheng, Lead of Edge Cloud Container Product, SF Technology

In the future, the KubeEdge community will keep the open governance model as well as the collaborative concept, and will further improve the user experience, providing a more reliable and stable experience for users. Meanwhile, KubeEdge will continue to explore new areas, such as cloud edge collaborative AI, cloud edge collaborative robots, and edge cluster management.

· 2 min read

On July 26, 2024, KubeEdge released v1.18. The new release features significant improvements in stability and security, while also enhancing usability.

1.18 What's New

Release Highlights

Router Manager Support High Availability(HA)

When CloudCore adopts high availability deployment, RouterManager needs to determine whether to route messages to the correct CloudCore. This feature is already supported in v1.18.0, and RouterManager supports high availability.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5619, #5635)

Authorization Enhancement for CloudCore Websocket API

CloudCore need restrict the access to cluster resources for edge nodes. In this release,CloudCore supports node authorization mode. CloudHub identify the sender of messages and check whether the sender has sufficient permissions, so that CloudCore can restrict an edge node from operating the resources owned by other edge nodes.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5512, #5585)

Support Device Status Reporting

Device status reporting is a capability required for device management. It was previously planned but not implemented. In version 1.18, we support this feature. Device status reporting can be easily implemented based on the community mapper template.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5649, #5650)

Keadm Tool Enhancement

Before this release, keadm(KubeEdge Installation Tool) is only supported to configure a subset of parameters before EdgeCore was installed. Now we can use the '--set' flag to configure the parameters of the full configuration edgecore.yaml file, so that users can customize the parameters at installation time, without having to modify the configuration and restart the service after installation.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5564, #5574)

Encapsulate Token, CA and Certificate operations

We refactor the token and certificate-related codes, summarize the same businesses, and abstract the ability of certificates to improve scalability, maintainability, and readability.

Refer to the link for more details.(#5502, #5544)

Upgrade Kubernetes Dependency to v1.29.6

Upgrade the vendered kubernetes version to v1.29.6, users are now able to use the feature of new version on the cloud and on the edge side.

Refer to the link for more details. (#5656)

Important Steps before Upgrading

  • The CloudCore Authorization feature is disabled by default in release 1.18. If you need to use this feature, please set cloudhub.authorization.enable=true.

· 10 min read

This blog introduces how to enable Cilium Container Network Interface with KubeEdge.

Why Cilium for KubeEdge

Cilium is the one of the most advanced and efficient container network interface plugin for Kubernetes, that provides network connectivity and security for containerized applications in Kubernetes clusters. It leverages eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) technology to implement networking and security policies at the Linux kernel level, allowing for high-performance data plane operations and fine-grained security controls.

And KubeEdge extends the cluster orchestration capability down to edge environments to provide unified cluster management and sophisticated edge specific features.

Enabling Cilium with KubeEdge allows us to take advantage of both benefits even for edge computing environments. We can deploy the application containers where EdgeCore running and bind Cilium to connect with workloads in the cloud infrastructure. This is because Cilium can also enable WireGuard VPN with transparent encryption of traffic between Cilium-managed endpoints.

Further more, we can also rely on Cilium Tetragon Security Observability and Runtime Enforcement to confine security risk and vulnerability in edge environment.