Edge Manageability Framework (EMF) 3.1 Release announcement

[BasuGoudar-GitHub]

Edge Manageability Framework 3.1 Release

Landing Page - https://docs.openedgeplatform.intel.com/edge-manage-docs/3.1/index.html

Release Highlights
Edge Orchestrator is the primary product within the Edge Manageability Framework.
Edge Manageability Framework enables you to securely onboard and provision remote edge devices to a central management plane, orchestrate Kubernetes* clusters and applications across distributed edge, at scale. Edge Node software provides the profiles of infrastructure software configurations that get provisioned onto an onboarded node.

The EMF 3.1 release builds upon the first EMF 3.0 open source release adding key functionality. You can review the general functionality of the system in the 3.0 release notes.

Key Highlights of the EMF 3.1 release include, but are not limited to:

• New: Support for Out-of-band management using [Intel AMT/vPRO](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/vpro/vpro-manageability/overview.html). Integration of vPro Device Manageability services with EMF, allowing use of out-of-band management features. Functionality supported this release include Remote Device Power ON/OFF and Remote Device Reboot capabilities.
• Enhanced Provisioning capabilities and improvements
o New: Scale provisioning of Standalone edge nodes that with Operating system and lightweight kubernetes - (OXM Profile). Support for PXE boot along with HTTPs and USB boot.
o New: Support New EMT Desktop virtualization image with advanced GPU SR-IOV and Virtualization capabilites.
o New: Per edge Edge Node configuration through custom cloud-init script, to provide fixed IP during provisioning, specific proxies, enabling Kubernetes right at the very installation of the nodes or finally configuring GPU SRIOV or X11.
o Update: HookOS has been replaced with a lightweight EMT, ensuring full control and optimization of the components used to provision an EN.
o Update: Support for onboarding edge nodes without Serial number
o Update: Simplified host provisioning flow in the UI e.g User can choose the kubernetes cluster to be deployed during registration in UI.
• New: Support for Discrete GPU from Intel Battlemage B580(on EMT) and Nvidia P100(on Ubuntu 22.04) along with Intel integrated GPU with GPU SR-IOV(with IDV profile in OXM deployment).
• New: Security Compliance of an Edge Node is also now implemented through open CVE tracking for installed packages on EMT.
• New: Kubernetes distribution on edge node is migrated from rke2 to k3s achieving lightweight deployments in resource-constrained devices.
• New: Vastly improved Application Onboarding
o Ability to directly import helm charts, thus removing the need to write the deployment package for single helm chart applications.
o Deployment Packages are now directly exportable from the user interface, to help portability and debuggability.
o Deployment packages can now be imported as tar.gz files, making them more portable and easy to share.
• New: EMF can now be configured using - orch-cli a command line utility similar to kubectl.
• New: Support for reference applications
o Weld Porosity
o Smart Parking
o Loitering Detection
• Update: Additionally, efforts have been focusing on Trusted Compute to enable customers, benchmark it, continuous monitoring and workload isolation use case were enhance for robustness and adapt to minimal common EMT as trusted OS.

For a detailed list of features, see the Overview page and the Edge Manageability Framework README file.
Upgrades from Previous Releases
Breaking Change Notice: Upgrading from EMF 3.0 to 3.1 introduces shift in the Kubernetes distribution—from RKE2 to K3s. As a result, all edge nodes must be re-provisioned during the upgrade process to ensure compatibility and stability.
Edge Manageability Framework (EMF) version 3.1 supports direct upgrades from version 3.0 only using onprem upgrade guide and cloud upgrade guide. Versions earlier than 3.0 are not compatible with the 3.1 upgrade path.

[biapalmeiro]

Way to go!