Edge deployments involve multiple plants, factories, fleet, and multitier fleet management. They use a diverse set of devices, automation functions, and capabilities, and they serve different use cases. The sizing section of this solution provides guidance on tag-based deployment for Litmus Edge and Litmus Edge instances ingesting data to SDP on VxRail and PowerEdge systems. There could also be external Litmus Edge instances running on gateway devices that ingest data to Litmus Edge instances on this infrastructure. Data ingest throughput, latencies, and available storage capacity depend on proper resource availability for all these systems. The performance and flexibility available for real-time and historical analytics running on Litmus Edge, and aggregated analytics from SDP persistent store, are also governed by how the solution is deployed and whether interdependent data sets are readily available instead of running complex queries and joins across multiple data sources and providers. User experience for data visualization also improves with properly planned data layout. When deploying this solution, consider the interdependencies of all these components so that the solution can serve an appropriate number of users and devices to ensure that service levels for various fleet and factories can be met.

This solution relies on multi-data ingest streams, internal data providers like InfluxDB and TimescaleDB, persistent live-cache and long-term store managed by Pravega, and several other software components. Grafana, flows manager, user-defined analytics, and integrations are also supported by the solution. CPU, memory, and storage requirements for all these components are properly configured at the time of deployment, but some long running or ad-hoc operations may impose additional stress on the system. Additional resources beyond those recommended in Litmus sizing and scaling guidance may be necessary to support them. The flexibility and agility provided by VxRail, Litmus, and SDP simplify such resource management.

Multi-tier applications have different data protection and high availability requirements. Consider the frequency of backups, import/export for data and user-defined flows and configurations, scripts and container manifest files, volumes used by containers for persistent storage, and general backup of applications and back-end data stores to ensure that data protection and HA service levels for all these applications are met. The retention period for the ingested data can also be set to balance the resource requirements for mid-tier or low-tier applications, while keeping longer retention for mission-critical applications. Periodic clones of various VMs, external backups, and replication can also be configured at appliance level for improving Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) in the event of a disaster and to ensure the highest level of availability and recoverability using surviving or stand-by sites.

The number of users and devices performing data ingest, analytics, and visualization operations on the edge platform vary. Some users and devices remain active 24/7, and their workload profile is generally predictable. Others come alive periodically, and their workload profile depends on the type of processing they are doing and the scale of data they are ingesting or accessing. These users may impose sudden stress on the system with high IOPS or high bandwidth requirements. Systems should be capable of managing such an impetus to minimize the impact on normal operations. Such service levels can be managed by controlling resources available to such processes, or by scheduling such operations during off-peak hours. Virtualized and containerized environments with Litmus and SDP allow rapid creation of short-term environments.

Many edge systems operate under harsh conditions such as sudden temperature changes, frequent network outages, and sudden stress on the system due to long-running or time-sensitive processes. Any solution should be deployed to address worst-case scenarios to the best of its ability. VM-based deployments for Litmus Edge allow for easy provisioning of additional configurations, in case systems become heavily loaded, by using a standard, template-based deployment managed by the user or through Litmus Edge Manager instances. SDP instances can also be easily deployed, in case conditions require additional instances to be brought up for persistent store.

Litmus Edge provides the following main functions:

• Enables secure data collection from an industrial device.
• Normalizes data once collected.
• Processes, analyzes, and stores data at the edge.
• Runs container-based applications on top of the data.
• Provides time-series analysis using ready analytics and KPIs.
• Provides flow functionality to use configuration and analytics.
• Integrates edge systems to cloud or enterprise systems.

Litmus Edge lets users add connectors to enable integration with the following cloud service providers:

• AMQP SSL
• AMQP TCP
• Edge Access
• Kafka SSL
• Kafka TCP
• MQTT - Amazon AWS IoT Core over SSL
• MQTT - Azure IoT Hub using Device Certificates
• MQTT - Azure IoT Hub using SAS Key
• MQTT - Generic
• MQTT - Generic over SSL
• MQTT - Google IoT Core over SSL
• MQTT - IBM Watson over SSL
• MQTT - System Protobuf SSL
• MQTT - System Protobuf TCP
• Mindsphere PSK (experimental)
• Splunk

Users can integrate Litmus Edge with databases, and database applications can be enabled in the Applications Marketplace.

See Marketplace MySQL Example for further details.

Database connections allow table names in mixed case.

• Loopback Connector
• DB - InfluxDB SSL (experimental)
• DB - InfluxDB TCP experimental)
• DB - Microsoft SQL Server
• DB - Microsoft Server SSL (experimental)
• DB - MongoDB
• DB - MySQL
• DB - MySQL SSL (experimental)
• DB - Oracle
• DB - PostgreSQL
• DB - PostgreSQL SSL

Generate data from an edge device, then connect and store the data in the database. Use the steps in the following sections to store data into a database using the InfluxDB TCP connector.

A Marketplace is a catalog repository for specific applications. Before you can access applications in a Marketplace, you must have at least one functional Marketplace. The initial Litmus Edge environment includes a default public Marketplace.

Deploy applications for your public or private catalogs from the Marketplace pane. Once you have added your Marketplaces, you can view specific Marketplace lists, filter the applications found there, add and delete applications, display the applications as a list or tiles, and synchronize the timestamp and data for a specific application.

Applications include two local applications repositories:

• Public Marketplace
• Private Marketplace

You can launch applications on demand by enabling the Marketplace Catalog. Litmus Edge provides a default set of applications in a public Marketplace. Add your own Docker container-based applications in a Private Marketplace. Applications, once installed, can run offline.

For more details about Marketplace, see Applications.

A registry is a repository of containers for storing and delivering application images. When you deploy a Private Marketplace, you must first create a Docker Registry so you can access the application images. All the registries are available here (for example, Docker and Google Container Registry). You can add, modify, or remove a registry from the Registry pane.

A volume is a persistent storage that is attached with every installed application in a container-based environment. You can delete the volume, but this is not recommended. If a container is deleted, the volume is not deleted. In this case, you may want to delete the volume as well.

Litmus Edge can run applications found under the Applications > Overview pane of the navigation panel. It provides status, statistics, and shortcut commands for each installed application. A tile represents each application that is currently installed on Litmus Edge.

The Configure pane allows you to add a default Public Marketplace, or a Private Marketplace. Additionally, all Marketplaces can be modified or removed.

A Marketplace is a catalog repository for applications that are useful for configuration, data analysis, visualization, programming, or queries. Before a Marketplace is accessible, the user must deploy a catalog. Litmus Edge includes a default Marketplace.

The following figure shows the default setup of the Configure pane.

For more information, see Add a Private Marketplace.

Containers are a standardized unit of software. When you install an application from the Marketplace, at least one container for the installed applications will appear on the Containers pane. All applications in a private Marketplace run within Docker containers. Each application runs its own dedicated containers to ensure application isolation. Containers are isolated micro-services.

A Docker container is a portable image that is lightweight, standalone, and executable. It includes everything needed to run an application (code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, and settings). Each installed application runs at least one container and can run multiple containers, depending on the configuration.

The state of a container is color coded. A running container displays green, a paused container displays orange, and an exited container displays black.

To add an application to the Marketplace or to create a private Marketplace requires a Docker registry. The Docker registry and credential information are available through Litmus. Litmus provides access so you can control and manage applications you choose to deploy in the private Marketplace.

You can Create a Docker Image and Deploy It to Your Private Repository that is then displayed on the Containers pane in Litmus Edge, allowing you to run or stop it at your discretion.

Litmus Edge uses application images from the Docker registries. These images are needed before you can install an application. When you install an application from the Marketplace, the images are automatically pulled from the Docker registry.

You can pull images from three registries:

• Public Docker Hub
• Elastic public Docker registry
• Hard drive or import using FTP

The following figure shows the method used to pull the image in Litmus Edge:

Images can be downloaded from the Docker registry, uploaded from your hard drive, or imported using FTP. You can also view the total image size, view details for an image, copy an image, and remove any images stored on the Images pane.

System Info in Applications includes a JSON file that contains information about your applications.

View, filter, and refresh Marketplace system information from the System Info pane. The information contained here reveals the Docker status that is available inside the container environment.

Disk Usage shows the current statistics for the applications. Disk Usage displays the total number, active number, and size of containers, images, and volumes for your current applications. This is useful for diagnostic purposes. You can view the disk usage of an application and refresh application data for containers, images, and volumes from the Disk Usage pane.

The Dashboard module shows information about your Companies, Projects, and Devices. It includes tables and charts related to your system. The Dashboard module displays the total number of Companies, Projects, Devices, total database size, and total messages for the Litmus Edge Manager. It includes graphs and statistics for System Overview, CPU, and Disk usage.

The Data Lifecycle module acts as a toggle revealing the Statistics, Management, and Purge Policies submodules.

• Statistics—Includes the Disk usage, Data Cumulative chart, Top 10 Projects Chart, and Stats by Periods sections. You can view user and archive data, view disk usage by period, view disk usage by projects, and archive and purge data from this submodule.
• Management—Includes the Data Archive list. You can download archived data files and purge the archived data files from this submodule.
• Purge Policies—Includes the Instance Purge Settings and Companies Purge Settings sections. You can add instance and companies purge policies, and filter the instance and companies purge policies list from this submodule.

The Licenses module shows information about current licenses, features, and performance of devices. Activate online and offline licenses from here.

The Licenses module includes sections for Available Licenses, Features, Performance, and Online and Offline Activation.

The Users module allows managing the users, company teams, and project teams for Litmus Edge Manager.

The User Management pane has three sections:

• Users
• Company Teams
• Project Teams

The Templates module allows users to upload and download templates for Companies, Projects, and Instances. Users can access all templates available for different Companies, Projects, or Instances from here.

Templates can be uploaded from a file or created separately and then uploaded. Three scopes are defined for a template:

• Company—The template can be applied to all projects for a company.
• Project—The template can be applied to a device for this project.
• Instance—The template can be applied to all companies and projects for this Litmus Edge Manager.

The Software Images module allows you to manage updates and upgrades for the Litmus Edge devices managed by the Litmus Edge Manager.

The Upgrade module allows you to upgrade firmware versions of the Litmus Edge devices that are connected to Litmus Edge Manager. This is helpful when there are multiple deployments of Litmus Edge.

You can upload the .upd file from your hard drive, and then the version can be used to upgrade Litmus Edge devices.

Create groups of devices in the Litmus Edge Manager application, and update them at a specific time, or update them all at once using the firmware upgrade.

The Docker module acts as a toggle revealing two submodules for Images and Settings related to containers. The Images submodule allows users to upload Docker images from a file or to pull images from any Docker repository (for example, a private DockerHub repository).

Litmus Edge Manager provides a private Docker registry that can be used to host Docker images for the Marketplace.

The Settings submodule allows you to enable or disable the registry, enable or disable authentication, and add users for Docker registry management.

The Integration module acts as a toggle revealing two submodules for Kafka Settings and Clickhouse Settings. Data integration from the entire Litmus Edge deployment into third-party applications using Kafka is possible.

• Kafka—Includes the Kafka Server, Users, ACL, and Explore sections. You can download a certificate and copy the connection URLs for the Bootstrap Server and Kafka SSL Connection from the Kafka Server section. You can add and remove Kafka users, and change passwords from the Users section.
• Clickhouse—Includes the Clickhouse Server and Users sections. You can edit, enable or disable, and change the port status for each available protocol from the Clickhouse Server section. You can add and remove Clickhouse users, and change passwords from the Users section.

The Policies module allows you to modify current policies for connected devices and view the usage for which the policy is applied. Default policies are part of the system and are added during installation or upgrade.

Create multiple policies from a default policy, tailored to their environment, by copying a default policy and then modifying the copy. Make copies of any previously saved policy. Policies created in the Litmus Edge Manager Admin Console are available to your connected devices. You cannot delete a default policy.

The Policies pane includes two sections:

• Password Policies
• Policy Usage

The Settings module includes Current Version, Administrator, Email Settings, Proxy, and Support sections. You can view the details for the current version of Litmus Edge Manager from the Current Version section.

You can change the administrator password from the Administrator section. Enable or disable SMTP, enter host information, and use authentication to send emails from the Email Settings section. Add host information for the HTTP or HTTPS protocols from the Proxy section. Currently, HTTP proxy is used for offline license activation and for alerts, such as Webhook and Slack.

Litmus Edge Manager includes a way for you to create a hierarchy to structure how different Litmus Edge devices fit into the IT/OT environment of a company or enterprise. This hierarchy follows the same principles as other devices such as servers, PC-systems, or PLCs/controllers.

It is useful to visualize and organize where a Litmus Edge device fits into the overall architecture. The first level of the hierarchy is called Companies.

Companies are the highest hierarchy level under which everything is structured. Options can be the enterprise, company, or division/subsidiary names. Other valid choices are the name of a country, region, state, or city, as well as the production site. These names are based on how you understand your own hierarchy and how the hierarchy will represent the architecture.

See About Company Settings for more information about how to manage companies.

The second level of the Hierarchy is called Projects. Projects are used to administer most of the setup of the Litmus environment. Options can be a division, country, region, plant, project, or team. These names are based on the granularity required by the setup or how you understand your own hierarchy.

The Projects pane displays all the projects for the selected company in tile or list format.

The Dashboard module is specific to a Project. Open a Project for the Dashboard module to appear. It contains statistics about the whole project. This information is on the operational network and is completely offline. From the Dashboard module, you can:

• View the Devices: Online/Total section, which provides the number of connected devices and the total number of devices for your project.
• View the Messages Processed section, which provides the total number of messages processed, and the messages processed in the last 24 hours.
• View the Bytes section, which provides the total amount of data processed and the amount of data processed in the last 24 hours.
• View the Incidents section, which provides the total number of incidents for the project.
• View the Messages Rate section to see message rate details in chart form.
• View the Alerts section, which contains a list of devices for the project that have alerts, the alert description, event time, and status.

The Licenses pane allows you to view the License Status for the devices, the Device Status, the number of devices using specific features, a list of Expired Licenses, and a list of licenses expiring within a defined time period.

• The License Status section allows you to view the license status of the connected devices.
• The Device Status section allows you to view the number of devices that are online and offline.
• The Features chart allows you to view the number of devices using the available features.
• The Expired Licenses section allows you to view a list of devices with expired licenses.
• The Licenses expiring in 10 days section allows you to view a list of devices with licenses expiring soon. This list includes a countdown to license expiration and allows you to add a license and open the listed device.

Sites offers a third level of hierarchy to create an additional level of granularity but is not mandatory to use. Options can be Country, Site, plant, or plant area. These names are based on how you understand your own hierarchy.

Devices have two roles. Primarily, they represent an attached device of a Litmus Edge device to be managed and which is a potential data source. Secondarily, they represent the next level in the hierarchy, which can be a Line, Cell, or individual production asset.

• Info—Information about Manufacturer, Model Number, Serial Number, Software Version, Device Description, and device groups.
• Details—Includes device status, Disk, Memory, CPU, Network Interfaces, and Serial Interfaces information.
• Manage—Start and stop services like Flows, SSH, and Remote Access, and reboot the device from here, once activated.
• Explore—Includes a list of resources. View details for each resource grouping. Enable or disable Actions. Actions are allowed only if the device is online on the LWM2M interface. You can also view data for each resource.

  Upon device activation, an MQTT SSL connection is added for data transfer, and an LWM2M connection is added for management of the device.

  Data that is sent using the JSON schema is stored in the timeseries database.

• Raw—Any message that is being sent from Litmus Edge can be monitored. This information is used as a debug tab for the raw data.
• MQTT—Data being sent on MQTT can be published, or subscribed to, under this tab.

  There are three types of MQTT Topics: Request, Response, and Data. You can send/receive from the MQTT broker.

• Apps—Shows the list of marketplace applications deployed on the device. Start, stop, and delete applications from here.
• License—Upon activation of the Litmus Edge device, all license information is automatically loaded here. The License List, Features included, Performance Packs, Online Activation, and Offline Activation sections are included here.

  You can activate a license in online/offline mode.

• Backup—Upon activation of the Litmus Edge device, the backup for the Litmus Edge Manager is automatically stored here. You can make a device backup and restore a backup file for the Litmus Edge device.
• Logs—View Litmus Edge device activity here.

When you select Activation from the navigation panel, the Configuration and Requests submodules appear. You can perform activation provision (zerotouch) for a Litmus Edge device from these modules. The Configuration submodule allows you to add a license key and choose a template for deployment to a Litmus Edge device. The Requests submodule allows you to approve, reject, or delete an activation configuration.

You can view the Templates module from a Company or from an open Project. A Litmus Edge Manager device template can be created from Litmus Edge Manager by choosing from the connected devices. You can also upload a template file from Litmus Edge Manager.

You must select a scope when creating a template:

• Instance—The template can be applied to all projects for this Litmus Edge Manager.
• Company—The template can be applied to all projects for this company.
• Project—The template can be applied to only this project's applications.

After selecting a Project, the Applications module appears. Litmus Edge Manager includes a default Marketplace catalog with applications ready to be deployed. Add your own Marketplace catalog with applications and use it for deployment. Launch an application or view its details from here. A single application can be deployed to multiple Litmus Edge devices connected with Litmus Edge Manager. The applications that are deployed on Litmus Edge can be managed and monitored from here.

You can add a new network ID to remotely access a remote network, including a ZeroTier network. When you add a ZeroTier network, the ZeroTier members for edge devices are added automatically after activation.

After selecting a Project, the Software module appears. This module includes a list of jobs run for Litmus Edge Manager devices. You can run a job or view information about a job.

Single or multiple jobs can be scheduled for Litmus Edge devices. Use user-defined commands that can be scheduled to be executed. You can restart and update Litmus Edge software from here.

You can view the Events module from a Company or from an open Project. The Events module includes a list of events that have occurred for a Company, Team, Team Member, Project, Device, or All Events. You can view logs of each event.

After selecting a Project, the Incidents module appears. This module includes a list of devices for which there is an incident. Incidents are generated alerts that are based on triggers. View a device's details by clicking on its device ID, and view a trigger by clicking on the trigger link associated with a device.

After selecting a Project, the Alerts module appears, which includes the Action List and Triggers sections. Create, modify, and view actions, such as send an email, from the Actions List section. Create, view, and modify triggers for the actions listed from the Triggers section.

An alert occurrence is registered as an incident and is shown on the Incidents module, then uses an action to create an alert.

Alert options are as follows:

• Email
• Webhook
• Slack
• Pagerduty

After selecting a Project, the Jobs module appears, which includes a list of Device Jobs with status and record of execution. You can schedule a job to trigger some action on the device. You can add, modify, and remove a Job from the Device Jobs list. You can view a log and define MQTT and LWM2M commands.

After selecting a Project, the Features module appears. This module includes a default Marketplace catalog and Grafana application. Click the default Marketplace catalog to open the Marketplace Catalog in a new browser tab. From there, you can add Marketplace catalogs, and edit or delete the default Marketplace catalog. If you click a Marketplace catalog from this browser tab, the associated applications appear, and you can add new applications to the catalog.

Grafana is a visualization tool. Open the Grafana application in a new browser tab by clicking it. You can then view any of the listed Litmus Edge devices from the Dashboard. You can perform actions and edit the Dashboard from here.

You can view the Settings module from a Company or an open Project. This module includes four tabs:

• Settings—Includes the Project, Timezone, and Remove Project sections. Modify the project name and description from the Project section. Modify the timezone from the Timezone section. Remove the project from the Remove Project section.
• Members—Includes the Project Teams and Teams sections. Add and remove Company teams from the Teams section. From the Teams section, select from default Teams and Roles when adding a Team. Company Teams define which users are allowed to access the Company Projects. The default Team selection is OWNER. Available Roles are Write and Read. You can add as many teams as you want, and assign any team to any project.
• Credentials—Includes the Connection, SSL Certificate, Credentials, Topics, and ACL sections. Copy protocol URLs for MQTT and view API information for HTTP and HTTPS from the Connection section. Copy the certificate and download the PEM file from the SSL Certificate section. Add a user for custom topics from the Credentials section, and you can copy, add, and remove topics from the Topics section. Create and remove an access control list from the ACL section.
• Message Schema—Includes the Custom Attributes and JSON sections. You can add custom attributes from the Custom Attributes section. You can view the JSON schema of messages from devices that publish to the MQTT data topic from the JSON section. Metadata being sent in the standard topic payload can be added to the message schema.

A vast majority of companies are standardizing on one of these major cloud platforms – Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, or Cloudera.

Litmus Edge can enable your complete edge-to-cloud solution for IIoT.

The Litmus and Azure solution accelerates and enables Azure deployment, consumption, and usage. Litmus Edge can send data directly to the Azure IoT Hub. Litmus collects, normalizes, and sends data from any asset to Azure for advanced analytics and machine learning, and then Azure models can be deployed back to Litmus Edge using the Azure container for continuous process improvement.

Litmus Edge is integrated with the Google Cloud Platform to allow customers to connect and collect industrial data from any asset and send it directly to the Google Cloud Platform for immediate use. Litmus and Google have partnered together to accelerate application deployment at the network edge, making it easy to deploy an application once and scale it across networks to the edge.

Litmus Edge is flexible enough to collect and send machine data to AWS IoT Greengrass at the edge, or to AWS Web Services in the cloud. Litmus provides pre-built device drivers to connect to any edge data source, has a data collection and normalization engine that structures and stores data into a ready-to-use format for AWS, and has an embedded machine learning runtime that can run any AWS data model at the edge.

Litmus has pre-built connectors for most enterprise systems and can develop others for customers as needed. Litmus Edge connects via using MQTT, REST API, native Kafka, and native database interface for a flexible, easy to deploy edge-to-cloud solution.