Managing Containerized Software on Edge Computers with Open Horizon

Open Horizon is an edge computing platform that uses policy-based autonomous agents to manage fleets of devices. It can handle unreliable networks and has the ability to revert to previous versions of software in case of failure. It also allows for the manual provision of software bill of materials (S-BOM) data to avoid deploying risky software.

• Open Horizon uses policy-based autonomous agents to manage fleets of devices
• It can handle unreliable networks and has the ability to revert to previous versions of software in case of failure
• It allows for the manual provision of software bill of materials (S-BOM) data to avoid deploying risky software

Open Horizon was used in the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project, which replicated the trip of the Mayflower from England to North America completely autonomously. The ship had no captain and was able to navigate through the harbors and follow the rules of the road on its own, dodging other boats.

Join Glen for a technical introduction to the Linux Foundation's Edge project, Open Horizon. Open Horizon is a single pane of glass for secure containerized software lifecycle management at extreme scale on both Kubernetes clusters and stand-alone Linux hosts running only Docker. Unlike other Edge Computing solutions, Open Horizon uses fully autonomous Agents on each edge computer, driven by your stated Intent, making independent decisions for the management of their own edge node. Open Horizon supports ARM32 (v6 and up), ARM64, x86/64, ppc64le, and soon RISC-V hardware with as little as 512MB RAM (or even less). The Agents themselves need only about 30MB at runtime. Open Horizon's decentralized architecture is the inverse of what you might expect for a system that manages large numbers of edge computers. The Agents are in charge here and cannot be coerced into violating their policies. They are designed to be installed behind firewalls and listen on no external ports at all; they are unreachable by hackers. Instead, Agents reach outward to the Management Hub for rendezvous, messaging, and other information sharing but ultimately they independently decide on the best course of action for their own node. Attend this session to learn more about this exciting open source project!