Core Concepts
The enterprise edge has become a business-critical frontier. Today, up to 75% of enterprise data is created outside the data centers. It is generated across factories, stores, remote sites, vehicles, and infrastructure. The scale is massive.
At the same time, edge environments remain resource-constrained by design. They operate in real-world conditions, with limited connectivity and tight operational margins. Yet the hardware landscape is changing fast. New generations of edge CPUs and GPUs are now powerful, affordable, and widely available. This makes real-time analytics, Edge AI, and autonomous decision-making practical at the edge.
Traditional centralized cloud models cannot keep up. Latency is dictated by physics. Costs grow with every round trip. When connectivity is degraded, remote sites lose autonomy. That creates risk, complexity, and operational friction for distributed deployments.
Eclipse ioFog brings cloud-native principles to the edge without ignoring real-world constraints. It is secure, vendor-agnostic, and open by design, reducing operational complexity while preserving local autonomy at each site.
Introducing Eclipse ioFog
Eclipse ioFog operates edge environments as a managed cluster even when individual Edgelet nodes must stay isolated for reliability and security. It shifts work from manual, site-by-site operations to a unified, cluster-wide model while preserving local autonomy at each edge location.
Key capabilities
Eclipse ioFog provides the capabilities required to run and operate software workloads across distributed edge environments. It focuses on the full lifecycle of applications, services, and edge operations with unified control at scale.
Edge environment and Edgelet nodes
Eclipse ioFog simplifies how edge environments are onboarded. Edgelet nodes use the Edgelet runtime to establish secure identity and connectivity to the Control Plane. Installation and upgrades are automated through iofogctl and the EdgeOps Console, without deep per-site customization.
The platform provides an open operational layer above hardware and operating systems. You manage diverse environments as one cluster while preserving local isolation.
Application and workload lifecycle orchestration
Eclipse ioFog orchestrates the complete lifecycle of containerized workloads at the edge. Applications are deployed, updated, versioned, and retired consistently using declarative YAML manifests.
Environmental differences are abstracted so teams focus on what should run and where, not on per-site wiring. That enables repeatable deployments, controlled rollouts, and safe updates across edge clusters.
Configuration, secrets, and policy management
Configuration values and secrets are defined centrally and distributed securely to edge workloads at runtime. Role-based access control (RBAC) ensures users, automation, and workloads stay within intended scope.
Secure connectivity
Eclipse ioFog establishes trust between the Control Plane and edge devices. Each Edgelet node and workload uses verified identity with built-in certificate management.
A secure service mesh (Router, Skupper-based) and distributed message bus (NATS) are provided by default. Services communicate with encryption across nodes and sites while edge networks can remain isolated from a routing perspective.
Observability and operations
Teams observe workload status, connectivity, and health across sites from one operational view. iofogctl supports automation-first workflows. The EdgeOps Console supports day-two operational visibility and cluster management.
- For component relationships and deployment topologies, see Architecture overview.
- To run a lab cluster locally, follow Quick start with local deployment.
- For production paths, see Platform deployment and Prepare your Kubernetes cluster.
- For an end-to-end walkthrough, try the Acme Smart Plant tutorial.