website/content/en/docs/pluggable-components/kubeedge.md

title	keywords	description	linkTitle	weight
KubeEdge	Kubernetes, KubeSphere, Kubeedge	Learn how to enable KubeEdge to add edge nodes to your cluster.	KubeEdge	6930

What is KubeEdge

KubeEdge is an open-source system for extending native containerized application orchestration capabilities to hosts at edge. It supports multiple edge protocols and looks to provide unified management of cloud and edge applications and resources.

KubeEdge has components running in two separate places - cloud and edge nodes. The components running on the cloud, collectively known as CloudCore, include Controllers and Cloud Hub. Cloud Hub serves as the gateway for the requests sent by edge nodes while Controllers function as orchestrators. The components running on edge nodes, collectively known as EdgeCore, include EdgeHub, EdgeMesh, MetadataManager, and DeviceTwin. For more information, see the KubeEdge website.

After you enable KubeEdge, you can add edge nodes to your cluster and deploy workloads on them.

Enable KubeEdge before Installation

Installing on Kubernetes

As you install KubeSphere on Kubernetes, you can enable KubeEdge first in the cluster-configuration.yaml file.

1. Download the file cluster-configuration.yaml and edit it.

   vi cluster-configuration.yaml
   

2. In this local cluster-configuration.yaml file, navigate to kubeedge.enabled and enable it by setting it to true.

   kubeedge:
     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true".
   

3. Set the value of kubeedge.cloudCore.cloudHub.advertiseAddress to the public IP address of your cluster or an IP address that can be accessed by edge nodes.

4. Save the file and execute the following commands to start installation:

   kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubesphere/ks-installer/releases/download/v3.0.0/kubesphere-installer.yaml
   
   kubectl apply -f cluster-configuration.yaml
   

Enable KubeEdge after Installation

1. Log in to the console as admin. Click Platform in the top-left corner and select Cluster Management.

2. Click CRDs and enter clusterconfiguration in the search bar. Click the result to view its detail page.

   {{< notice info >}} A Custom Resource Definition (CRD) allows users to create a new type of resources without adding another API server. They can use these resources like any other native Kubernetes objects. {{</ notice >}}

3. In Resource List, click the three dots on the right of ks-installer and select Edit YAML.

4. In this YAML file, navigate to kubeedge.enabled and enable it by setting it to true.

   kubeedge:
     enabled: true # Change "false" to "true".
   

5. Set the value of kubeedge.cloudCore.cloudHub.advertiseAddress to the public IP address of your cluster or an IP address that can be accessed by edge nodes. After you finish, click Update in the bottom-right corner to save the configuration.

6. You can use the web kubectl to check the installation process by executing the following command:

   kubectl logs -n kubesphere-system $(kubectl get pod -n kubesphere-system -l app=ks-install -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') -f
   

   {{< notice tip >}} You can find the web kubectl tool by clicking the hammer icon in the bottom-right corner of the console. {{</ notice >}}

Verify the Installation of the Component

{{< tabs >}}

{{< tab "Verify the component on the dashboard" >}}

On the Cluster Management page, verify that the section Edge Nodes has appeared under Node Management.

{{</ tab >}}

{{< tab "Verify the component through kubectl" >}}

Execute the following command to check the status of Pods:

kubectl get pod -n kubeedge

The output may look as follows if the component runs successfully:

NAME                                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cloudcore-5f994c9dfd-r4gpq                        1/1     Running   0          5h13m
edge-watcher-controller-manager-bdfb8bdb5-xqfbk   2/2     Running   0          5h13m
iptables-hphgf                                    1/1     Running   0          5h13m

{{</ tab >}}

{{</ tabs >}}

Custom Configurations

After you enable KubeEdge, you can manually create a ConfigMap to customize some configurations, such as the download URL of keadm and the version of KubeEdge. Local configurations will be dynamically updated based on the ConfigMap.

Here is an example of the ConfigMap:

apiVersion: v1
data:
  region: zh # Download region.
  version: v1.6.1 # The default installed version of KubeEdge.
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: edge-watcher-config
  namespace: kubeedge

{{< notice note >}}

You can specify zh or en for the field region. zh is the default value and the default download link is https://kubeedge.pek3b.qingstor.com/bin/v1.6.1/$arch/keadm-v1.6.1-linux-$arch.tar.gz. If you set region to en, the download link will be https://github.com/kubesphere/kubeedge/releases/download/v1.6.1-kubesphere/keadm-v1.6.1-linux-amd64.tar.gz.

{{</ notice >}}