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The table below shows the recommended minimum specifications for the hardware in the testing installation. It is possible that lower spec hardware could be used for many of the nodes. The sensor node hardware in particular is specific to the testing installation and could be swapped out with any number of other platforms as long as LoRa connectivity was possible using the hardware.

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At a minimum one node is required for the master and deploy and build and cicd roles together, and at least two edge nodes and two camera nodes. The testing installation uses two edge and camera nodescontains eight nodes(one deploy node, one master node, one build node, one cicd node, two edge nodes, two camera nodes).

Network Requirements

All nodes are expected to have IP connectivity to one another during installation and normal operation, with the exception of the camera nodes. In the installation described here, all the nodes are connected to a private wired network operating at 100Mbps or better. However, there are no strict bandwidth or latency requirements.

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Note that the installation process will install several more software packages through Ansible playbooks. These are listed below for reference. Packages included by default in an install of Ubuntu 20.04 server are not included. The version numbers are those that are available/installed at the time of writing by the Ansible playbooks on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Build Cicd node
  • make 4.2.1, build-essential 12.8, python3-pip 20.0.2
  • Ansible collections community.docker, kubernetes.core, community.crypto
  • Docker (docker.io) 20.10.12
  • Robot Framework 5.0
  • , default-jre 2:1.11-72
  • Jenkins 2.361.2

• Build node
  • make 4.2.1, build-essential 12.8, python3-pip 20.0.2, default-jre 2:1.11-72
  • Robot Framework 6.0
  • Docker (docker.io) 20.10.12
  • Go 1.16.10
• Deploy node
  • make 4.2.1, build-essential 12.8, python3-pip 20.0.2
  • Ansible 2.12.9
  • Ansible collections community.docker, kubernetes.core, community.crypto
• Master node
  • Docker (docker.io) 20.10.12
  • python3-pip 20.0.2
  • Python packages cryptography and kubernetes
  • mosquitto 2.0.15, mosquitto-clients 2.0.15
  • Kubernetes (kubectl, kubelet, kubeadm) 1.22.9
  • Flannel 0.17.0, flannel-cni-plugin 1.0.1 (Note: These are containers installed via Kubernetes through a config file)
• Edge node
  • Docker (dockerdocker.io) 20.10.12
  • Kubernetes (kubelet, kubeadm) 1.22.9 (kubectl may be installed for debugging purposes)

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Before running the setup_deploy.yml playbook, modify two hosts files need to be modified.

Modify the hosts file in the deploy/playbook directory with the host names and IP addresses of the master and edge nodes in your cluster. Also update the entry for the master node's host if it is not the same as the deploy node..  

all:
   hosts:
   children:
    deploy:
         hosts:
            localhost:
      master:
      hosts:
            localhostsdt-master: # hostname of master node
      edge_nodes:
       hosts:
            jet03: # Namehostname of first edge node
          ip: 192.168.2.27 # IP address of first edge node
             lora_id: 1
        jet04 jet04: # Namehostname of second edge node
          ip: 192.168.2.29 # IP address of second edge node
           lora_id: 4
         vars:
        ansible ansible_user: edge
        ansible ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/edge

In addition, if the master node is not the same as the deploy node, remove the line connection: local wherever it follows hosts: master in the playbooks in deploy/playbook.

In the file master.yml in the deploy/playbook/group_vars/all directory, set the master_ip value to the IP address of the master node. Note that this is required even if the master node is the same as the deploy node.

master_ip: 192.168.2.16

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Modify the host names and ip addresses of master/build/cicd/deploy nodes in the cicd/playbook/hosts file. 

all:
  hosts:
    localhost:
    arm-build:
      ansible_host: erc01
      ansible_user: edge
      ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/edge
      ansible_become_password: password
  children:
    master:
      hosts:
        sdt-master: # hostname of master node
    build:
      hosts:
        sdt-build: # hostname of build node
          ip: 192.168.10.203 # ip address of build node
      vars:
        ansible_user: sdt-admin 
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/lfedge_build 
    cicd:
      hosts:
        sdt-cicd: # hostname of cicd node
          ip: 192.168.10.200 # ip address of cicd node
      vars:
        ansible_user: sdt-admin 
        ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/lfedge_cicd 
    deploy:
      hosts:
        sdt-deploy: # hostname of deploy node
          ip: 192.168.10.231 # ip address of deploy node

In the file master.yml in the deploy/playbook/group_vars/all directory, set the master_ip value to the IP address of the master node. Note that this is required even if the master node is the same as the deploy node.

master_ip: 192.168.2.16

Set Up the Deploy Node

The account which runs the deploy playbooks will need to be able to use sudo to execute some commands with super-user permissions. The following command can be used (by root or another user which already has super-user permissions) to enable the use of sudo for a user:

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Populating the registry will leave extra copies of the downloaded images on the master node. You can remove these using the following command (the images will remain in the private registry):

ansible-playbook -i ./hosts clean_local_images.yml

Preparing Edge Nodes

Add an administrative account to all the edge nodes. This account will be used by the deploy node when it needs to run commands directly on the edge nodes (e.g. for installing base software, or for joining or leaving the cluster). The following commands run on each edge node will add a user account named "edge" and add it to the group of users with sudo privileges.

sudo adduser edge
sudo usermod -aG sudo edge

Note, if you use an administrative account with a different name, change the variable ansible_user in the edge_nodes group in the deploy/playbook/hosts file to match the user name you are using.

The deploy node needs to log in via SSH to the edge nodes using a cryptographic key (rather than a password), so that a password does not need to be provided for every command. Run the following command on the deploy node to create a key called "edge" for the administrative user.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/edge

The parameter ~/.ssh/edge is the name and location of the private key file that will be generated. If you use a different name or location, change the ansible_ssh_private_key_file variable for the edge_nodes group in deploy/playbook/hosts to match.

Once the key files have been created, the following command can be run from the deploy node to copy the key to each edge node so a password will not be required for each login. (The administrative user's password will be requested when running this command.)

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/edge.pub edge@nodename

After the administrative account has been created, the following command will perform initial setup on all edge nodes configured in the deploy/playbook/hosts file:

ansible-playbook -i ./hosts edge_install.yml

The playbook will perform the following initialization tasks:

• Make sure there is an entry for the master node in /etc/hosts
• Install required software packages including Docker and kubelet
• Make sure the user can run Docker commands
• Configure Docker, including adding the certificates to secure access to the private registry

Edge Node Kubernetes Requirements

Like the master node, swap should be disabled and the cluster IP address ranges should be excluded from proxy processing if necessary.

Note that on the Jetson Nano hardware platform has a service called nvzramconfig that acts as swap and needs to be disabled. Use the following command to disable it:

sudo systemctl disable nvzramconfig.service

Preparing the Build Node

In the test installation, the build node is a VM running on a x86 PC, with Ubuntu Linux 20.04 installed. In addition, the Ansible tool must be installed. The Ansible tool provided in the Ubuntu software repository is a slightly older version which needs to be upgraded, refer to Ansible Installation Guide to install the latest ansible version. But before running that playbook you need to configure a few things described in the section below.

The playbooks for use on the build node are stored in the cicd/playbook directory of the source repository. These playbooks refer to other files in the source code, so the entire directory tree should be copied onto the deploy node. The easiest way to do this is by cloning the git repository directly as shown below:

git clone repository-url

Note, using the --depth=1 option can save some disk space if you don't need to modify the source code. In addition, the directory to clone the git repository must be same with the git repository directory of the deploy node.

The git command will create a directory in the directory where it is run named after the repository. Inside the new directory will be the cicd/playbook directory. Unless noted otherwise, the commands below should be run in that directory.

Node Configuration

Before running the setup_build.yml playbook, if you use a different hostname of the master node, update the entry for the master node's host.

all:
  hosts:
    localhost:
    arm-build:
      ansible_host: erc01
      ansible_user: edge
      ansible_ssh_private_key_file: ~/.ssh/edge
      ansible_become_password: password
  children:
    master:
      hosts:
        sdt-master: # hostname of master node

Set Up the Build Node

If the build node is not on the same host as the deploy node, the user that runs the deploy playbooks must have an account on the build host under the same name, and that account must have sudo privileges like the account on the deploy node (see above). 

The following command will prepare the master node for use:

ansible-playbook -i ./hosts setup_build.yml

The playbook will perform the following initialization tasks:

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(the images will remain in the private registry):

ansible-playbook -i ./hosts clean_local_images.yml

Preparing Edge Nodes

Add an administrative account to all the edge nodes. This account will be used by the deploy node when it needs to run commands directly on the edge nodes (e.g. for installing base software, or for joining or leaving the cluster). The following commands run on each edge node will add a user account named "edge" and add it to the group of users with sudo privileges.

sudo adduser edge
sudo usermod -aG sudo edge

Note, if you use an administrative account with a different name, change the variable ansible_user in the edge_nodes group in the deploy/playbook/hosts file to match the user name you are using.

The deploy node needs to log in via SSH to the edge nodes using a cryptographic key (rather than a password), so that a password does not need to be provided for every command. Run the following command on the deploy node to create a key called "edge" for the administrative user.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/edge

The parameter ~/.ssh/edge is the name and location of the private key file that will be generated. If you use a different name or location, change the ansible_ssh_private_key_file variable for the edge_nodes group in deploy/playbook/hosts to match.

Once the key files have been created, the following command can be run from the deploy node to copy the key to each edge node so a password will not be required for each login. (The administrative user's password will be requested when running this command.)

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/edge.pub edge@nodename

After the administrative account has been created, the following command will perform initial setup on all edge nodes configured in the deploy/playbook/hosts file:

ansible-playbook -i ./hosts edge_install.yml

The playbook will perform the following initialization tasks:

• Make sure there is an entry for the master node in /etc/hosts
• Install required software packages including Docker and kubelet
• Make sure the user can run Docker commands
• Configure Docker, including adding the certificates to secure access to the private registry

Edge Node Kubernetes Requirements

Like the master node, swap should be disabled and the cluster IP address ranges should be excluded from proxy processing if necessary.

Note that on the Jetson Nano hardware platform has a service called nvzramconfig that acts as swap and needs to be disabled. Use the following command to disable it:

sudo systemctl disable nvzramconfig.service

Preparing the Build Node

The deploy node needs to log in via SSH to the build node and the cicd node using a cryptographic key (rather than a password), so that a password does not need to be provided for every command. Run the following command on the deploy node to create a key called "lfedge_build" for the administrative user to log in to the build node.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -f ~/.ssh/lfedge_build

The parameter ~/.ssh/lfedge_build is the name and location of the private key file that will be generated. If you use a different name or location, change the ansible_ssh_private_key_file variable for the build group in cicd/playbook/hosts to match.

Once the key files have been created, the following command can be run from the deploy node to copy the key to build node so a password will not be required for each login. (The administrative user's password will be requested when running this command.)

ssh-copy-id i ~/.ssh/lfedge_build.pub sdt-admin@nodename

Note, if you use an administrative account with a different name, change the variable ansible_user in the build group in the cicd/playbook/hosts file to match the user name you are using.

After the configuration of private key, the following command will prepare the build node for use:

ansible-playbook -i ./hosts setup_build.yml --ask-become-pass

The playbook will perform the following initialization tasks:

• Make sure there is an entry for the master node and deploy node in /etc/hosts
• Install required software packages including Docker and Go and Robot Framework
• Make sure the user can run Docker commands
• Configure Docker, including adding the certificates to secure access to the private registry

Preparing the CICD Node

The deploy node needs to log in via SSH to the cicd node using a cryptographic key (rather than a password), so that a password does not need to be provided for every command. Run the following command on the deploy node to create a key called "lfedge_cicd" for the administrative user to log in to the cicd node.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -f ~/.ssh/lfedge_cicd

The parameter ~/.ssh/lfedge_cicd is the name and location of the private key file that will be generated. If you use a different name or location, change the ansible_ssh_private_key_file variable for the cicd group in cicd/playbook/hosts to match.

Once the key files have been created, the following command can be run from the deploy node to copy the key to build node so a password will not be required for each login. (The administrative user's password will be requested when running this command.)

ssh-copy-id i ~/.ssh/lfedge_cicd.pub sdt-admin@nodename

Note, if you use an administrative account with a different name, change the variable ansible_user in the cicd group in the cicd/playbook/hosts file to match the user name you are using.

Building the Custom Services

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• CPS: Cyber-Physical System
• MQTT: A lightweight, publish-subscribe network protocol designed for connecting remote devices, especially when there are bandwidth constraints. (MQTT is not an acronym.)