Edge Container Platforms
As we stated previously, a core attribute of Edge computing is its use of Containers to encapsulate the application services you will deploy to the Edge – far Edge devices, servers, or servers in the network or metro Edge. We explained why this is key to Edge computing in Chapter 3, Designing and Building Edge Software.
A prerequisite to executing a Container is that it runs on a Container runtime, such as Docker, Podman, or Kubernetes. Any of these runtimes can host and execute an OCI-compliant Container. Nonetheless, some essential differences between each of these must be considered before building out your Edge infrastructure. We will discuss those differences and their trade-offs here.
In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:
- The Open Container Initiative (OCI)
- Docker
- Podman
- Kubernetes
