Driving an Open Edge Computing Infrastructure Through Wind River Titanium Cloud Contributions

Intel and Wind River previously announced our intent to open source components from the Wind River® Titanium Cloud portfolio. Today we are pleased to deliver on that commitment with code being upstreamed in a new open source project called StarlingX, hosted by the OpenStack Foundation.

Wind River Titanium Cloud was built on open source components, which are then extended and targeted to be hardened to address critical infrastructure requirements: high availability, fault management, and performance management needed for continuous 24/7 operation. Wind River Titanium Cloud also includes the low latency, high performance, scalability, and security needed for edge and IoT workloads.

Through the StarlingX project, we are opening many of these enhancements with the hope others find this a good reference platform upon which to innovate. Intel and Wind River invite the community to contribute code and looks forward to working together to define the infrastructure stack for edge computing and accelerating integration across many existing open source projects including cloud native technologies. By upstreaming these enhancements directly under the OpenStack Foundation, we can work closely with the OpenStack community to minimize technical debt and help speed downstream implementation.

The code available via the StarlingX project will:

• Provide service management, REST APIs and process monitoring
• Deliver standalone fault management service including extensions to OpenStack Horizon
• Provide software repository management, patching, upgrade, backup, and restore services
• Include bare metal management, a next-generation Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) along with VIM helper components, the OpenStack Nova API proxy, and guest API infrastructure

Additional code contributions not upstreamed to existing projects will deliver capabilities through sub-projects under the StarlingX to provide critical functionality: service management, fault management, software and lifecycle management, bare metal installation and management, and configuration management.

The StarlingX project will work closely with cross-industry edge usages. Beyond networking and enterprise, a prime opportunity is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Historically an area with highly-specialized solutions tailored to specific functions, customers and partners are embracing the value of virtualized edge compute. By addressing common requirements through an open community, StarlingX can enable the innovation to power robust, commercially-supported solutions, and we look forward to working with solution providers and integrators to meet these demands.

We plan to work closely with the Akraino Edge Stack to drive standards and integrate multiple upstream components using a common framework for edge computing. We expect Akraino will play an important midstream integration role for many of these types of upstream and open source components, by building blueprints for a range of industry uses.

We expect businesses will benefit from the capabilities in the StarlingX project through streamlined installation, commissioning, and maintenance of edge compute solutions. The operational complexity of current solutions, combined with the specialized IT knowledge required to deploy them, has been a barrier for Communications Service Providers looking to fully capitalize on the business opportunities of edge applications. Wind River Titanium Cloud technology contributed to the StarlingX project streamlines installation, commissioning, and maintenance of edge compute solutions and simplifies these processes through automation, helping businesses minimize cost, lower risk, and reduce staffing needed for edge deployments.

We invite you to join this exciting, groundbreaking work. Download the StarlingX source code, try it out, and join the discussion at starlingx.io. For those of you at OpenStack Summit in Vancouver BC this week, be sure to stop by the Intel booth to learn more.

Imad Sousou is a corporate vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center at Intel. Jim Douglas is president of Wind River.