PCEI R5 Architecture Document

Owned by Oleg Berzin
Last updated: Aug 05, 2021
3 min read

PCEI General Architecture

The general PCEI Architecture Document can be found at this link: https://lf-akraino.atlassian.net/wiki/x/1ojQ

PCEI R4 Architecture and Focus

Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) is implemented based on Edge Multi-Cluster Orchestrator (EMCO). PCEI Release 4 (R4) supports deployment of Public Cloud Edge (PCE) Apps from two Public Clouds (Azure and AWS), deployment of a 3rd-Party Edge (3PE) App (an implementation of ETSI MEC Location API App), as well as the end-to-end operation of the deployed PCE Apps using simulated Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) IoT client

The EMCO-based implementation of PCEI in R4 is shown below:

Architecture and Validation elements used in PCEI R4.

  1. Deploy EMCO on K8S
  2. Deploy Edge K8S clusters
  3. Onboard Edge K8S clusters onto EMCO
  4. Provision Public Cloud Core Service and Push Custom Module for IoT Edge
  5. Package Azure IoT Edge and AWS GGC Helm Charts into  EMCO application tar files
  6. Onboard Azure IoT Edge and AWS GGC as a service/application into EMCO
  7. Deploy Azure IoT Edge and AWS GGC onto the Edge K8S clusters
  8. All pods came up and register with Azure cloud IoT Hub and AWS IoT Core
  9. Deploy a custom LPWA IoT module into Azure IoT Edge on the worker cluster
  10. Successfully pass LPWA IoT messages from a simulated IoT device to Azure IoT Edge, decode messages and send Azure IoT Hub

PCEI R5 Architecture and Focus

Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) is implemented based on Edge Multi-Cluster Orchestrator (EMCO) and Controller Design Studio (CDS).


Key features and implementations in Akraino Release 5:


  1. Controller Design Studio (CDS) Terraform Executor. Enables automatic and North Bound Interface (NBI) API driven pull from Gihub and execution of Terraform plans, including:
    1. Public Cloud Core orchestration (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
    2. Equinix Interconnect and Infrastructure Orchestration (Fabric l2/L3, Network Edge, Bare Metal).
    3. Openstack orchestration (VM deployments).
  2. CDS Helm Chart Processor. Allows automatic and NBI API driven pull from Github of Composite Application Helm charts for:
    1. Onboarding Services and Apps to ONAP (a.k.a., EMCO – Edge Multi-Cluster Orchestrator).
    2. Creation of Service Instances and Deployment of Kubernetes Apps on target Kubernetes clusters.
  3. CDS Kubernetes Cluster Registration Processor. Allows NBI API driven automatic target cluster registration with ONAP (EMCO) for:
    1. Kubernetes application deployment on registered target clusters.
  4. North Bound Interface APIs for:
    1. Cluster Registration into ONAP
    2. Terraform Plan Execution against target providers (Cloud, Equinix, Openstack).
    3. Helm Chart Onboarding into ONAP for Service and App Registration.
    4. Service Instance creation in ONAP and App deployment onto target Kubernetes clusters.
  5. Application and Network Function Deployments. NBI API triggered deployment of Cloud Native Apps and Network Functions on target Kubernetes Edge Clusters:
    1. Azure IoT Edge.
    2. Free 5G Core.