ELASTIC - D2.1: Lightweight and Robust Orchestrating Mechanisms - Initial Version

This deliverable describes the first version of the design of lightweight, efficient, and secure orchestration mechanisms that leverage Wasm and eBPF technologies. It explains the state of the art in WebAssembly Orchestration, including integration in Kubernetes and WebAssembly-native orchestration platforms such as wasmCloud. It details the improved Wasm orchestrator “Propeller”, providing an alternative for environments where Kubernetes-based solutions do not fit. For example, it uses the WebAssembly Micro runtime (WAMR) in order to support truly tiny devices with real-time operating systems such as Zephyr. It strikes a fine balance between compatibility with the existing cloud-native ecosystem and support for low-resource edge devices by reusing some key cloud-native components and replacing some components with those more suitable for IoT devices. For example, it supports regular OCI registries but swaps out HTTP for MQTT communication. It also discusses our innovations in AI/ML workload orchestration and our innovations for bringing WebAssembly to the cyber-physical edge by creating high-performance standardised interfaces to connect WebAssembly applications to external hardware using protocols such as I2C and USB. Finally, it brings these aspects together in a single proposed architecture and reflects on the current state and the next steps for this work.