By The Linux Foundation June 6, 2019 Embedded, Automotive and IoT, Networking and Orchestration, Press Release

• *Inaugural release unifies multiple sectors of the edge across disciplines, including IoT, Enterprise, Telecom, and Cloud *
• *Delivers tested and validated deployment-ready blueprints *
• *Creates framework for defining and standardizing APIs across stacks, via upstream/downstream collaboration *

SAN FRANCISCO – June 6, 2019 – LF Edge , an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced the availability of Akraino Edge Stac k Release 1 (“Akraino R1”). Created via broad community collaboration, Akraino’s premiere release unlocks the power of intelligent edge with deployable, self-certified blueprints for a diverse set of edge use cases.

Launched in 2018, and now part of the LF Edge umbrella, Akraino Edge Stack is creating an open source software stack that supports a high-availability cloud stack optimized for edge computing systems and applications. Designed to improve the state of edge cloud infrastructure for enterprise edge, over-the-top (OTT) edge, and carrier edge networks, it offers users new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, to maximize the applications and functions supported at the edge, and to help ensure the reliability of systems that must be up at all times.

“Akraino R1 represents the first milestone towards creation of a much-needed common framework for edge solutions that address a diverse set of edge use cases,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation.

“With the support of experts from all across the industry, we are paving the way to enable and support future technology at the edge.”

About Akraino R1

Akraino R1 delivers the first iteration towards new levels of flexibility to scale edge cloud services quickly, maximize efficiency, and deliver high availability for deployed services. It delivers a deployable and fully functional edge stack for edge use cases ranging from Industrial IoT, Telco 5G Core & vRAN, uCPE, SDWAN, edge media processing, and carrier edge media processing. As the premiere release, it opens doors to further enhancements and development to support edge infrastructure.

Akraino is currently comprised of 11+ blueprint families with 19+ specific blueprints under development to support a variety of edge use cases. The community tests and validates the blueprints on real hardware labs supported by users and community members.

Akraino R1 includes 10 “ready and proven” blueprints, including:

• Radio Edge Cloud (REC), part of the Telco Appliance Blueprint Family , REC is a telco- grade edge cloud platform for containers. It’s main use case is supporting the near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller, a new network element that enables external applications to control aspects of the 5G radio network. REC is the first example of the Telco Appliance Blueprint family which provides a reusable set of modules that will be used to create sibling blueprints for other purpose tuned near real time appliances.
• Integrated Edge Cloud ( IEC) Type 1 (Small Edge) & 2 (Medium Edge) is a platform that enables new functionalities and business models on the network edge. It targets telco applications with small and medium deployments of Edge Cloud and supports Arm processors and architecture.
• The Network Cloud family of blueprints enables hardware configuration and fully automated deployment of multiple edge sites from a remote Regional Controller. Specific Network Cloud blueprints in R1 include Unicycle with SR-IOV ; Unicycle with OVS-DPDK ; and Rover, which supports multiple Telco and Enterprise edge use cases including 5G.
• **The StarlingX Far Edge Distributed Cloudblueprint addresses edge and far edge use cases at high-density locations such as malls, airports and sports stadiums to support value added services (such as caching, processing, and analyzing data) at these events and locations. **
• Edge Lightweight and IOT (ELIOT) supports use cases for IOT gateway and uCPE (SD-WAN). Addressing Industrial IoT, smart cities, and uCPE, ELIOT enables a lightweight software stack which can be deployed on edge nodes with limited hardware capacity.
• The Kubernetes-Native Infrastructure (KNI) Provider Access Edge blueprint leverages best practices from Kubernetes to manage edge computing stacks at scale and with a consistent, uniform user experience from the infrastructure up to the workloads, on bare metal or public cloud.

Akraino Edge Stack is working in an iterative approach with continuous automation and enhancements. Additions and enhancements will be made to the baseline functionality delivered in Akraino R1.

More information on Akraino R1, including links to documentation, can be found here . For information on how to get involved with LF Edge and its projects, visit https://www.lfedge.org/ .

Looking Ahead

The community is already planning R2, which will include both new blueprints and enhancements to existing blueprints, tools for automated blueprint validations, defined edge API’s, and new community lab hardware.

Linux Foundation general manager of Networking, Automation, Edge and IoT, Arpit Joshipura, will give a keynote presentation at Open Source Summit China about open source edge technologies on Tuesday, June 25.

LF Edge will host a workshop focused on Akraino and other LF Edge projects onsite at Open Source Summit North America , August 21-23 in San Diego, Calif. entitled “State of the (LF) Edge;” more details are available here.