First Release of StarlingX Open Source Edge Cloud Software Now Available

StarlingX – the open source edge computing and IoT cloud platform optimized for low latency and high performance applications – is available in its first release today. The project was established in May as a pilot project supported by the OpenStack Foundation (OSF) and builds on code contributed by Wind River and Intel Corporation.

StarlingX delivers new services to help fill the gaps in the open source edge cloud ecosystem to meet strict requirements of edge use cases and scenarios in both carrier and industrial applications. Additionally, StarlingX leverages components of projects including Ceph, OpenStack and Kubernetes and complements them with new services such as configuration and fault management with a focus on key requirements like high availability (HA), quality of service (QoS), performance and low latency.

Use Cases Reflect the Need for High-Performance Edge and IoT Infrastructure

• Ultra low-latency 5G and industrial IoT use cases including industrial automation, cloud radio access network and smart city/buildings (metering and monitoring)
• Multi-access edge computing applications including augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and location-based retail
• High-bandwidth, large-volume applications including mobile high-definition video, content delivery and caching, and surveillance
• Enterprise-focused small cell services for stadiums and high-density locations
• Universal customer premise applications (uCPE)

An Engaged, Growing Community

Today’s release reflects strong growth in the StarlingX community, with 1,329 commits from 84 contributors, including developers representing Wind River, Intel, 99Cloud, China UnionPay, SUSE, Fujitsu and NEC, among others. Engage with the StarlingX community on IRC (#starlingx on Freenode) and on the mailing list (lists.starlingx.io).

Key Capabilities

Configuration Management – The code offers node configuration and inventory management services with auto-discovery and configuration of new nodes, critical for deploying and managing large numbers of remote or hard-to-access sites. The Horizon graphical user interface and a command-line interface manage the inventory of CPUs, GPUs, memory, huge pages and crypto/compression hardware.

Fault Management – Users can set, clear and query custom alarms and logs for significant events on both infrastructure nodes and virtual resources such as VMs and networks. Users can access the Active Alarm List and Active Alarm Counts Banner on the Horizon GUI.

Host Management – The software provides lifecycle management functionality to manage host machines via a REST API interface. This vendor-neutral tool detects host failures and initiates automatic recovery by providing monitoring and alarming for cluster connectivity, critical process failures, resource utilization thresholds and hardware faults. The tool also interfaces with the board management controller for out-of-band reset, power-on/off and hardware sensor monitoring and shares host state with other StarlingX components.

Service Management – StarlingX provides lifecycle management of services by providing high availability through redundancy models like N+M or N across multiple nodes. The service supports the use of multiple messaging paths to avoid split-brain communication failures as well as active or passive monitoring to specify the impact of a service failure with a fully data-driven architecture.

Software Management – This service allows users to deploy updates for corrective content and new functionality with a consistent mechanism applicable for all infrastructure stacks from the kernel up to OpenStack services. The module can perform rolling upgrades including parallelization and support for host reboot allowing the moving of workloads off of the node by using live migration.