>> Announcer: Live from Vancouver, Canada, it's theCUBE,
covering OpenStack North America 2018.
Brought to you by Red Hat, the OpenStack Foundation,
and its ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage
of OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver.
I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost for the week, John Troyer.
Happy to welcome to the program
first-time guest Ildiko Vancsa,
coming off the edge keynote presentation this morning.
She is the ecosystem technical lead
with the Edge Computing Group
as part of the OpenStack Foundation.
Thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you.
>> Coming into this show, edge is one of those things
that it was actually pretty exciting to talk about
because edge is not only super hot,
but when I thought back to previous shows,
this is the sixth year we've had theCUBE here
and my fifth year doing it,
it's like, wait, I've been talking
to all the Telcos for years here.
NFV was one of those use cases,
and when you connect the dots,
it's like oh, edge, of course.
I said this conference is actually hipster
when it comes to edge.
We were totally covering it well before we called it that.
So, explain to us your role in the foundation
and what led to the formation of this track.
>> Yeah, so I'm the ecosystem technical lead
within the foundation, which is basically a role
that belongs under the business development team.
So, I'm basically building connections
with our ecosystem members.
I'm trying to help them succeed with OpenStack,
both as software package and as a community.
We are embracing open source, of course,
so I'm also trying to advocate for
involvement in open source because I think that's a key.
Like, you know, picking up an open source software component
and use it, that's a great start,
but if you really want to be successful with it
and you want to be able to successfully build it
into your business model,
then getting involved in the community,
both enhancing the software and maintaining
of the software, that's really key.
So, my role is also onboarding companies as well
to be active members of the community,
and my focus is shifting toward edge computing.
The history of edge computing in OpenStack
basically started last May when Beth Cohen
from Verizon described their use case,
which is OpenStack in a tiny box in production cycle, wow.
So that was also a little bit of an eye-opener
for us as well, that yes, it's telecom.
It's 5G, but this is the thing that's called edge,
and maybe this is something
that we should also look deeper into.
So, we went to San Francisco last September, OpenDev,
200 people, architects, software developers
trying to figure out what edge computing is.
I think we had the question at every single session,
someone asked that, okay, yeah so,
what did you mean exactly when you said edge?
Because from the nature of the architecture,
like, you have the central cloud
and then the sides on the different--
>> John: There are several edges depending
on how far you want to go. >> Exactly.
>> For you and OpenStack, what does edge mean,
or all the above?
>> With OpenStack, so after OpenDev
when we realized that it's not really a well-defined term,
we wrote up a white paper.
It's at OpenStack the role/edge.
It's a short one, really to just set the ground
for what edge computing is.
And what we came up with is,
so don't imagine like a two-sentence definition
for edge computing because I still
strongly believe that doesn't exist,
and anyone who claims it, that's not true.
What we did with the white paper
is basically we set characteristics and criteria
that defines cloud edge computing per se,
like what people are talking about
when you're moving out the compute
and then working closer to the edge.
Like what that means from the bandwidth perspective,
from how you will manage it,
what that means for security, and all these sort of things.
And you can basically characterize what edge means.
So we rather described these layers
and how far we go, and as far as like, you know,
the very end edge device and like the IOT sensors,
that's not a target of OpenStack.
So, OpenStack itself is infrastructure as a service,
so our Edge Computing Group is still staying on that layer.
The Edge Computing Group itself is focusing on the angles,
what edge brings onto the table,
all these requirements, you know,
collecting the use cases and trying to figure out
what's missing, what we need to implement.
>> If can repeat and maybe I'll get it right or wrong.
The idea is at a cell tower or at a remote office
or branch office or some closet somewhere,
there is a full set of OpenStack running,
maybe a minimal set of OpenStack,
but it's live, it's updatable.
You can update services on it.
You can update the actual OpenStack itself,
and it doesn't need the spoke hardware necessarily,
but it's now updatable and part
of a bigger multi-cloud infrastructure
from some sort of service entity or enterprise.
>> Yeah. >> Is that fair?
>> I think that's fair.
So, there's OpenStack itself
that people know very well, a lot of projects.
So when we talk about edge,
obviously we don't want to say that, okay,
pick the whole thing and install all the 60 projects
because that's really not suitable for edge.
So what, for example, the group is looking into,
that which OpenStack components are essential for edge.
And also the group is defining small edge, medium edge,
what that means from hardware footprint perspectives,
so just to figure out what the opportunities are there,
what will fit, what will not fit.
OpenStack itself is very modular by today,
so you can pick up the services that you need.
So what we discussed, for example, this week
is Keystone, identity, you need it of course.
So how much that fits into the edge scenarios.
And I think the main conclusion
of the forum session yesterday was that,
yeah, Keystone supports Federation.
We talked through the cases,
and it seems like that it's kind of there.
So, we now need a few people who will sit down,
put together the environment, and start testing it
because that's when it comes out that,
you know, almost there, but there a few things to tweak.
But basically the idea is what you described,
pick up the component, put it there, and work with it.
We also have another project
called Cyborg, which is fairly new.
That's for hardware acceleration,
so it is providing a framework to plug in GPUs,
FPJs, and these sort of, a bit more specialized hardware
which will be really useful for edge use cases to OpenStack.
So that's for example something that China Mobile
and the OPNFV Edge Cloud Group is looking into to use,
so I really hope that we will get there this year to test it
in the OPNFV Pharos Labs in action.
So we also have pretty great cross-community collaboration
on trying to figure this whole thing out.
>> Yeah, it often helps if we have examples to talk about
to really explain this.
Beth Cohen, we spoke with her last year
and absolutely caught our attention.
Got a lot of feedback from the community on it.
Had Contron on earlier this week talking about,
John was saying, here's some small device there
with a little blade and is running pieces
of OpenStack there to be able to run.
Anything from the keynote or, boy,
I think there's 40 sessions that you've got here.
If you can, give us a couple of examples
of some of the use cases that we're seeing
to kind of bring this edge to reality.
>> Example use cases is,
we just heard this morning, for example,
someone from the textile industry
like how to detect issues with the fabric.
So this is like one new manufacturing use case.
I also heard another one, which is not checking
the fabric itself, but basically the company
who manufactures those machines
that they are using to create the fabric,
so they would like to have a central cloud
and have it connected to the factories.
So, being able to monitor how the machines are doing,
how they can improve those machines,
and also within the factory
to monitor all the circumstances.
Because for all the chemical processes,
it's really important that the temperature
and everything else is just, you know, clicks
because otherwise all your fabrics will have to go to trash.
So, that's manufacturing.
A lot of telecom 5G, obviously that is really,
really heavy because that's the part
of the industry which is there today,
so with 5G, all those strict requirements.
This is really what we are mainly focusing on today.
We are not specializing anything for telecom
and in 5G use cases, but we want to make sure
that all our components fit into that environment as well.
In the white paper, for example,
you also could see the retail use case.
I'm not sure whether that will be exactly
on stage this week, but that is also a great example
on like Walmart with the lot of stores around,
so how you manage those stores because
they're also not wanting to do everything centrally.
So, they would like to move the functionality out.
What if the network connectivity is cut?
They still have to be able to operate
the store as nothing happened.
So, there are a lot of segments of the industry
who already have kind of really well-defined use cases.
And what we see is that there's many overlapping
between the requirements from the different segments
that we're going to address.
>> Are we seeing things like AI and ML
coming up in these conversations also?
>> Yes, like I think it was the manufacturing use case
when I heard that they are planning to use that,
and it's popping up.
I think as far as our group is concerned,
we are more looking into,
I don't know, let's say lower-level requirements
like how you maintain and operate
the hundreds and thousands of edge sites,
what happens with security, what happens with monitoring,
what happens with all these sort of things.
Like we have a new project rolling in
under the foundation umbrella called Airship,
which is basically deployment and lifecycle management,
which is supposed to address one of the aspect
that you were talking about on, okay,
so how you manage this, how you upgrade this.
And upgrade is, again, a really interesting question
because I think I talked to someone yesterday
who was like, yes, the Contron guys,
they were saying that yeah, upgrade, it's really ambitious.
So let say that maybe 18, 24 month or something like
some kind of tech operator will decide to upgrade something
out in the edge because it's out there,
it's working, let's not touch this.
So when we talk about upgrade,
even that, I think, will depend on the bits
of the industry that, what pace they will decide to take.
>> Are there any particular surprises or learnings
that you've had this year after talking
with this community for a week now?
You said, well, last year,
I was very impressed last year
when they got up on stage and talked about that.
That kind of expanded my mind a little bit.
You've been working with this now for a year,
this whole track and forum sessions.
Anything you're excited about taking to the future
or learnings or surprises that, oh,
this is really going to work or anything like that?
Any parts of it that are really interesting?
You talked about security upgrades.
We've talked about a lot of the technical components,
but it seems like it's working.
>> I think at this point, at least on my end,
I think I'm over the surprise phase.
So what surprises me the most is
how many groups there are out there
who are trying to figure out what this whole edge thing is.
And what we need to really focus on
among the technical requirements is that
how we are working together with all these groups
just to make sure that the integration
between the different things that we are all developing
and working on is smooth.
So like, we've been working together
with the OPNFV community for a while now.
It's a really fruitful relationship between us.
Like seeing OpenStack being deployed
in a full-stack environment and being tested,
that's really priceless.
And we are planning to do the same thing with edge as well,
and we are also looking into ONAP, Aquino,
Et-see-mac, so looking into the open source groups,
looking into the standardization
and really just trying to ensure
that when we talk about open infrastructure,
that that really is designed and developed
in a way that integrates well with the other components.
It's synchronized with the standardization activities
because I think especially in case of edge,
when we say interoperability,
that's a level higher than what we call
the interoperability on the telecom level I think.
Like when you just imagine one operator network
and applications from other providers popping up
in that network, and components that
just realizing the network popping
up from different vendors.
And this whole thing has to work together.
So, I think OpenStack and open infrastructure
has a really big advantage there compared
to any proprietary solution because we have to address this,
I think, really big challenge,
and it's also a really important challenge.
>> Ildiko, really appreciate you giving us
all the updates here on the edge track, the keynote,
definitely one of the areas that is capturing
our attention and lots of people out there.
So, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you for the opportunity.
>> All right, for John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman.
Lots more coverage here
from the OpenStack Summit 2018 in Vancouver.
Thanks for watching theCUBE.