Kubernetes on Edge: Bringing Your Code to Constrained Places

Web Assembly has the potential to disrupt the cloud industry by bringing compute close to data sources and managing containers at scale. The presentation includes two demos showcasing the use of container technologies at the edge and the ability to access peripherals.

• Web Assembly can bring compute close to data sources and manage containers at scale
• Two demos were presented showcasing the use of container technologies at the edge and the ability to access peripherals
• The first demo showed a simple Python script that reads temperature and humidity values from a sensor attached to the GPIO interface and sends the payload to the cloud
• The second demo demonstrated the use of Kubernetes to run a Rust binary as a container on a Raspberry Pi
• Web Assembly has the potential to be as disruptive as a new type of cloud

The speaker wore a plastic Halloween costume and expressed excitement about the potential of Web Assembly to disrupt the cloud industry. The demos showcased the ability to access peripherals and run containers at the edge, which is important for managing data sources and reducing network transport costs. The speaker emphasized the potential for Web Assembly to be as disruptive as a new type of cloud.

The main goal of IoT and edge solutions is to bring the workloads closer to sources of data, events and transactions. In many cases this means maintaining them in places with network and compute resource constraints. This session will cover technologies and best practices available to achieve this goal. We will start by covering some common challenges of creating IoT edge workloads. We’ll discuss pros and cons of using traditional containers versus upcoming technologies such as WebAssembly and WASI. Next, we’ll explore mechanisms of deploying built artifacts to the actual hardware, ranging from using different Kubernetes deployments, to simpler container runtimes and specialized Edge platforms. We’ll also focus on the evolving state of running WebAssembly workloads using Kubernetes and how to apply best practices to IoT and edge use cases. We’ll try to provide general guidance on how to choose the best approach for your project with a practical demo of one of the possible solutions.