Edge Compute Platform Installation

Requirements

We support running the Edge Compute Platform on Ubuntu Server LTS (64-bit) for both the arm64 and amd64 CPU architectures. A minimum of 1 GB of RAM is required, 2 GB or more is recommended.

Prepare the Hardware: Install K3s on 64-bit Linux

The Edge Compute Platform uses K3s, a lightweight kubernetes. A 64-bit Linux OS is required for running K3s.

Ubuntu Reference
The Ubuntu Server LTS (64-bit) download can be found at Download Ubuntu Server.
The version for ARM-based server systems can be found at Ubuntu Server for ARM.
For Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 the downloads can be found at Ubuntu Server for Raspberry Pi. Make sure to select the 64-bit version.
A tutorial for installing on Raspberry Pi is also available.
Flashing the downloaded OS image to an SD card or a USB driver can be done using balenaEtcher.
K3s Installation
You can use the installation script available at https://get.k3s.io to install K3s as a service on systemd and openrc based systems.
The simplest form of this command, with the option to allow writing to the kubeconfig file, is as follows:
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | K3S_KUBECONFIG_MODE="644" sh -s -
Note: This command needs to be run from the shell (terminal, command line) of the OS.
If desired, the installation can be customized using installation options listed in the K3s documentation.
This will install a single-node cluster with one master and one worker.
The k3s service is automatically started after installation.
Other utilities installed are:
  • kubectl
  • crictl
  • k3s-killall.sh
  • k3s-uninstall.sh

Your system is now ready for deployment of the Edge Compute Platform Management Service.

Figure 1.
Note: When installing on Raspberry Pi: Before installing K3s on Ubuntu 18.04 on a Raspberry Pi the file /boot/firmware/nobtcmd.txt needs to be edited (or /boot/firmware/btcmd.txt if Bluetooth is enabled) by adding cgroup_enable=cpuset cgroup_memory=1 cgroup_enable=memory to the end of the line (i.e., not on a new line).

On Ubuntu 20.04 the file to edit is /boot/firmware/cmdline.txt.

After editing and saving the file, reboot the Raspberry Pi for the changes to take effect.

Install the Management Service

The ECP Management Service needs to be installed on a K3s installation to connect to SmartWorks Studio after which management and orchestration can be done from the cloud.

This service is automatically installed when registering your cluster in SmartWorks Studio. This happens when you run the kubectl commands on your hardware, as shown in the cluster creation wizard.