Avassa: The Swedes Have Invaded the Edge
I was delighted to see Avassa back at Edge Field Day showcasing the latest technology that the company is delivering for edge application and orchestration oversight.
Avassa is a software only, cloud based, Control Tower platform for edge that is container first in orientation. Container first is a mantra at the company as Avassa called out the trend that “cloud out” is trending towards VMs eventually being sunset out of existence and “IoT in” seeking containers eventually sunrise as the de facto standard.
Carl Moberg, CTO of Avassa and a TechArena innovation voice, said that full elimination of VMs will be difficult due to pesky Windows-based applications that continue to require support and are unfriendly in native containerized environments.
So what is Avassa doing to support this continuum? They noted that open-industry standard frameworks for integrated VMs and containers is required that supports containerization of VMs for legacy apps.
Avassa delivers encapsulation through a stack containing a container image encapsulating a VM image and start script sitting on top of a container runtime using KVM with integrated health probes. While their container orchestrator cannot natively manage VM updates, they have developed means for this management and demonstrated this live in the session.
Their management extends to leading edge deployments of AI models or web assembly (WASM) containerized alongside Linux-based modern applications. This natural containerization of AI models and web assembly makes sense given that the latter have been primarily developed by born-on-the-cloud organizations by the very same engineers in many cases that built cloud native computing models.
The Avassa Control Tower demonstration highlighted ease of control of edge applications as well as depth of information collected by the Avassa oversight including the aforementioned health probes. They demonstrated migration of a VM-based service to a containerized alternative without disruption of service.
So what about Avassa’s decision to control with Docker runtime with KVM vs. K8s? This was a point of contention in last Edge Field Day’s presentation from the company, and Carl provided a helpful insight on market traction, stating that many companies from mid-market to hyperscalers have embraced this configuration for far or leaf edge environments where Avassa is targeted. He admitted that when edge starts looking like a data center in control and complexity, K8s may make sense, but that this is not Avassa’s target. This makes sense given the leaner stack offered by the Avassa solution for the constraints of edge infrastructure.
Carl and Fredrik moved on to management of applications in offline edge scenarios. Once edge devices are up and running with Avassa’s Control Tower, how are applications managed, and what happens when facing a scenario of upstream outages? The Avassa team provided a demo with a literal cut cord which made the Edge Field Day delegates quite twitchy. After all, many are former or current IT administrators. Carl pointed out that edge requires a different approach to cloud environments, which relies on failover in a situation like this.
How Avassa has managed this is to rely on a downstream admin with unique control of nodes at the site. This control creates an updated stack at the edge disconnected from central Control Tower, and customers choose how they manage the complexity of central workloads vs. local deployments once edge resources come back online.
So what is the TechArena take? Avassa has delivered a compelling central control across device orchestration and application management. I think they’ve made some tough choices on how to manage edge environments with the efficiency and control required for these environments, and I think they’ve chosen wisely for delivery of services within the far edge. For customers looking to deploy containerized environments, they’re a terrific option and should be evaluated by enterprises across industries. To learn more about Avassa, visit their site and check out TechArena’s content featuring the company.
I was delighted to see Avassa back at Edge Field Day showcasing the latest technology that the company is delivering for edge application and orchestration oversight.
Avassa is a software only, cloud based, Control Tower platform for edge that is container first in orientation. Container first is a mantra at the company as Avassa called out the trend that “cloud out” is trending towards VMs eventually being sunset out of existence and “IoT in” seeking containers eventually sunrise as the de facto standard.
Carl Moberg, CTO of Avassa and a TechArena innovation voice, said that full elimination of VMs will be difficult due to pesky Windows-based applications that continue to require support and are unfriendly in native containerized environments.
So what is Avassa doing to support this continuum? They noted that open-industry standard frameworks for integrated VMs and containers is required that supports containerization of VMs for legacy apps.
Avassa delivers encapsulation through a stack containing a container image encapsulating a VM image and start script sitting on top of a container runtime using KVM with integrated health probes. While their container orchestrator cannot natively manage VM updates, they have developed means for this management and demonstrated this live in the session.
Their management extends to leading edge deployments of AI models or web assembly (WASM) containerized alongside Linux-based modern applications. This natural containerization of AI models and web assembly makes sense given that the latter have been primarily developed by born-on-the-cloud organizations by the very same engineers in many cases that built cloud native computing models.
The Avassa Control Tower demonstration highlighted ease of control of edge applications as well as depth of information collected by the Avassa oversight including the aforementioned health probes. They demonstrated migration of a VM-based service to a containerized alternative without disruption of service.
So what about Avassa’s decision to control with Docker runtime with KVM vs. K8s? This was a point of contention in last Edge Field Day’s presentation from the company, and Carl provided a helpful insight on market traction, stating that many companies from mid-market to hyperscalers have embraced this configuration for far or leaf edge environments where Avassa is targeted. He admitted that when edge starts looking like a data center in control and complexity, K8s may make sense, but that this is not Avassa’s target. This makes sense given the leaner stack offered by the Avassa solution for the constraints of edge infrastructure.
Carl and Fredrik moved on to management of applications in offline edge scenarios. Once edge devices are up and running with Avassa’s Control Tower, how are applications managed, and what happens when facing a scenario of upstream outages? The Avassa team provided a demo with a literal cut cord which made the Edge Field Day delegates quite twitchy. After all, many are former or current IT administrators. Carl pointed out that edge requires a different approach to cloud environments, which relies on failover in a situation like this.
How Avassa has managed this is to rely on a downstream admin with unique control of nodes at the site. This control creates an updated stack at the edge disconnected from central Control Tower, and customers choose how they manage the complexity of central workloads vs. local deployments once edge resources come back online.
So what is the TechArena take? Avassa has delivered a compelling central control across device orchestration and application management. I think they’ve made some tough choices on how to manage edge environments with the efficiency and control required for these environments, and I think they’ve chosen wisely for delivery of services within the far edge. For customers looking to deploy containerized environments, they’re a terrific option and should be evaluated by enterprises across industries. To learn more about Avassa, visit their site and check out TechArena’s content featuring the company.
