Quick Start With Local Deployment

In this guide we will:

Install the prerequisites and tools required to create and manage Edge Compute Networks ('ECNs')
Create an ECN on a local machine to demonstrate the processes and components involved in an ECN
Deploy a set of Microservices on our local ECN

Prerequisites

Docker v26.0+: Open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. (installation instructions)

Install iofogctl on Mac

Mac users can use Homebrew:

brew tap eclipse-iofog/iofogctl
brew install iofogctl

Install iofogctl on Windows

The Windows binary can be downloaded from Eclipse ioFog Packages.

Prepare Windows

In order to use iofogctl to deploy an ECN locally on Windows we will need to configure Docker to run Linux containers:

Install docker desktop for windows
Follow the guidelines for using WSL2 or Hyper-V backend docker desktop for windows
Ensure that docker is running with docker desktop for windows

Install iofogctl on Linux

The Debian package can be installed like so:

wget -qO- https://iofog.datasance.com/iofog.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/iofog.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [arch=all signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/iofog.gpg] https://iofog.datasance.com/deb stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/iofog.list >/dev/null
sudo apt update
sudo apt install iofogctl -y

And similarly, the RPM package can be installed like so:

cd /etc/yum.repos.d ; curl https://iofog.datasance.com/iofog.repo -LO
sudo yum update
sudo yum install iofogctl

Verify iofogctl Installation

Run iofogctl version to verify we have successfully installed the CLI.

Deploy ioFog Locally

We can use iofogctl deploy to install and provision ECN components. Here we will deploy a containerized ECN locally.

Go ahead and paste the following commands into the terminal:

echo "---
apiVersion: iofog.org/v3
kind: LocalControlPlane
metadata:
  name: ecn
spec:
  iofogUser:
    name: Quick
    surname: Start
    email: user@domain.com
    password: q1u45ic9kst563art
  auth:
    url: https://example.com/
    realm: realm-name
    realmKey: realm-key
    ssl: exter
    controllerClient: pot-controller
    controllerSecret:
    viewerClient: ecn-viewer
  nats:
    enabled: false
  controller:
    container:
      image: ghcr.io/eclipse-iofog/controller:3.7.3
---
apiVersion: iofog.org/v3
kind: LocalAgent
metadata:
  name: local-agent
spec:
  container:
    image: ghcr.io/eclipse-iofog/agent:3.7.0
" > /tmp/quick-start.yaml
iofogctl deploy -f /tmp/quick-start.yaml

After the deployment has successfully completed, we can verify the resources we specified in the YAML file are running on our local machine.

iofogctl get all

Which should output something similar to:

NAMESPACE
default

CONTROLLER      STATUS    AGE           UPTIME      ADDR             PORT
local           online    22m29s        22m35s      0.0.0.0          51121

AGENT           STATUS    AGE           UPTIME      ADDR             VERSION
local-agent     RUNNING   22m7s         22m7s       150.179.102.91   3.7.0

APPLICATION     STATUS    MICROSERVICES

MICROSERVICE    STATUS    AGENT         ROUTES      VOLUMES          PORTS

VOLUME          SOURCE    DESTINATION   PERMISSIONS	AGENTS

ROUTE           SOURCE MSVC     DEST MSVC

NB: The Agent status might say UNKNOWN for up to 30s. It is the time for the agent to report back its liveness to the controller.

The Controller acts as a control plane, it will be our main point of access and communication with our ECN. If we want to find out more about Controller, please read this.

The Agent is the component that is meant to run on our edge devices. Once it has registered itself with a Controller, the Agent will be in charge of actually pulling the microservices images and starting / stopping the microservices on our edge device. If we want to find out more about Agent, please read this.

Those components are all currently running as separate Docker containers on our local machine. We can list the active containers by running:

docker ps

Which should output something similar to:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                          COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS                                                          NAMES
71927882293f        ghcr.io/eclipse-iofog/router:3.7.0             "/qpid-dispatch/laun…"   15 minutes ago      Up 15 minutes       0.0.0.0:5672->5672/tcp, 0.0.0.0:56721-56722->56721-56722/tcp   iofog_PJFbk3ZHjX3RkNWxwcRqzDXnKV6mLHmq
8454ca70755b        ghcr.io/eclipse-iofog/agent:3.7.0             "sh /start.sh"           15 minutes ago      Up 15 minutes                                                                      iofog-agent
dc7568ad1708        ghcr.io/eclipse-iofog/controller:3.7.3         "node /usr/local/lib…"   16 minutes ago      Up 16 minutes       0.0.0.0:51121->51121/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8008->80/tcp                 iofog-controller

Teardown

To remove our ECN and any microservices deployed on it, we can run the following command:

iofogctl delete all

Next Steps

Now that you have seen what ioFog is about, you can create a real ECN with remote hosts. Instructions are found here.

We can also try deploying other Microservices on the local ECN. We can find instructions on writing our own Microservice here and a step-by-step tutorial.