Onboard edge computing devices with Secure Device Onboard and Open Horizon
Written by Joe Pearson, Chair of the Open Horizon TSC and Technology Strategist for IBM
For many companies, setting up heterogeneous fleets of edge devices across remote sites has traditionally been a time-consuming and sometimes difficult process. At the Linux Foundation’s Open Networking & Edge Summit conference last month, IBM announced that Intel’s Secure Device Onboard (SDO) solution is now fully integrated into Open Horizon and IBM Edge Application Manager and available to developers as a tech preview.
The Intel-developed SDO enables low-touch bootstrapping of required software at device initial power-on. For the Open Horizon project, this enables the agent software to be automatically and autonomously installed and configured. SDO technology is now being incorporated into a new industry onboarding standard being developed by the FIDO Alliance.
Developers can try this out by using the all-in-one version of Open Horizon. Simply run a one-line script on a target edge compute device or VM and simulate powering-up an SDO-enabled device and its onboarding.
Both Open Horizon and SDO recently joined the LF Edge umbrella, which aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system. Thanks to IBM’s participation in the LF Edge open source community, contributors in the community are helping advance the future of open edge computing solutions.
See how SDO works
Simplifying edge device onboarding
Our team uses the term “device onboarding” to describe the initial bootstrapping process of installing and configuring required software on an edge computing device. In the case of Open Horizon, that includes connecting it to the Horizon management hub services. We have simplified the software installation process by providing a one-liner script, so that a person can install and run a development version of Open Horizon and SDO on a laptop or in a small virtual machine.
Before SDO was available, the typical installation process required a person to open a secure connection to the device (sometimes on premises), manually install all of the software pre-requisites, then install the Horizon agent, configure it, and register it with the management hub. With SDO support enabled, an administrator simply loads the voucher into the management hub when the device is purchased and then associates the configuration. When a technician powers on the device and connects it to the network, the device automatically finds the SDO services, presents the voucher, and downloads and installs the software automatically.
Integrating SDO into Open Horizon
The Open Horizon project has created a repository specifically for integrating the SDO project components into the Open Horizon management hub services and CLI. The SDO rendezvous service runs along side the management hub and provides a simple interface to bulk load import vouchers.
LF Edge and open source leadership
LF Edge continues to strive to ensure that edge computing solutions remain open. In May 2020, IBM contributed Open Horizon to LF Edge. With Intel also contributing SDO to LF Edge, this ensures that another vital component of a complete edge computing framework is also open source.
We’re excited to collaborate with Intel to expand the deployment of applications from open hybrid cloud environments down to the edge, making them accessible, secure, and scalable for the developer ecosystem and community. For more videos about Open Horizon, please visit LF Edge’s Youtube Channel or click here LF Edge Open Horizon Playlist. If you have questions or would like to chat with leaders in the project, join us on the LF Edge Slack (#open-horizon, #open-horizon-docs, #sdo-general or #sdo-tsc).
