Edge Access

Updated

Note: Edge Access is in BETA.

ZEDEDA’s Edge Access is a standalone application that interfaces with ZEDEDA Cloud to give you the ability to remotely and securely access, control, and audit your edge devices and applications from anywhere. Existing customers can use Edge Access immediately with no additional infrastructure or onsite administrative setup.

Edge Access provides three significant advantages:

  • You don’t need a VPN to securely access an edge device.
  • You can access edge nodes even if they are not onboarded to ZEDEDA Cloud, provided they are on the same subnetwork as your onboarded edge nodes.
  • Developers and operators can interact with and debug their edge applications as if the applications were running on their local machines.

The following sections explain how to access and use Edge Access.

Prerequisites

To run the scripts that allow you to remotely access your edge assets, you will need to have Docker installed on your machine.

The login page

To log in to Edge Access, navigate to the login page and use your ZEDEDA Cloud credentials.

The Dashboard

After you log in to Edge Access, you see a grid of cards. They each represent a project in your enterprise. Those marked with “Edge View Enabled” are accessible remotely. Each card shows how many edge nodes belong to the project and how many application instances are running on the nodes.

edge-access1.png

View a project’s edge nodes

ZEDEDA displays the edge nodes in a project in tabular format. For each node, you can see its status, its EVE image version, its location, and whether it has an active edge view session.

To see the edge nodes in a project, click on the Edge Nodes section of a project’s card to view a list of the nodes that belong to that project.

edge-access2.png

View an edge node’s applications

ZEDEDA displays the applications running on an edge node in tabular format. For each application instance, you can see its status, its type, and the name of the application, which is distinct from the name you give to the application in the ZEDEDA system.

The possible Status values are:

  • Suspect
  • Online

The possible Type values are:

  • APP_TYPE_MODULE
  • APP_TYPE_VM
  • APP_TYPE_CONTAINER
  • external

To see the application instances running on a node, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Edge Nodes page for your project.
  2. Click on the name of an edge node.

Operations

Activate a remote session on an edge node

  1. Find the edge node you want to access in its project’s table of edge nodes.
  2. In the node’s Edge View Session column, click Activate Session. A popup will appear.
  3. If the Session Status is Inactive, click Activate Session. The session status will change to Activating.
    • Note: The activation process may take a few minutes.
  4. After the remote session is active, on the popup, click Download Script.
    • Note: you will use this script in the Remotely access an edge application procedure.

Remotely access an edge application

  1. In your terminal, to establish a connection with the edge node, run the script you downloaded in the Activate a remote session on an edge node procedure.
    • Run the following command to make your script executable: 
      chmod +x <LOCAL_PATH_TO_SCRIPT>
  2. Execute the following command to establish a connection: 
    <LOCAL_PATH_TO_SCRIPT> tcp/<APPLICATION_IP_ADDRESS>:<APPLICATION>
    • After your connection is successfully established, in your terminal output, you will see the local IP address that your application has been mapped to.

         edge-access3.png

  1. Open your web browser.
  2. Copy the local host IP address into your browser's navbar. The application’s GUI will appear.

Register an external device

To register an external device for edge access, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the ZEDEDA GUI.
  2. Click on Edge Nodes.
  3. Click on the name of the node that you want to add.
  4. Click on the Edit icon.
  5. Add a tag to your node, matching the following format: 
    <DESIRED_NODE_NAME>: tcp/<NODE_IP_ADDRESS>:<NODE_PORT_NUMBER>

To find the IP address of a node, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the ZEDEDA GUI.
  2. Click on Edge Nodes.
  3. Click on the name of the node that you want to add.
  4. Click on the Basic Info tab and find the node’s ip address in the Identity section.

Security

Edge Access offers all of the security of the ZEDEDA Cloud solution. You make no compromises when you interact with your assets remotely. Notably, your connections are encrypted end-to-end and administrators can terminate any active remote connection at any time.

Access your activity logs

On the top navigation bar, click on the User Events tab. On the User Events page, you can access logs for each day and also see a list of recent activity, such as logins, commands run, etc.

Was this article helpful?
0 out of 0 found this helpful