Edge View

Edge View is a standalone application developed by ZEDEDA to provide you with secure, remote access to your edge nodes and applications. It allows you to use your edge assets through your terminal as if you were directly logged in to them, enabling you to do hands-on maintenance and troubleshooting.

Edge View can be accessed through either the ZEDEDA GUI or the ZCLI.

Edge View architecture

Edge View uses a client-server model. The server app runs on your edge nodes, and the client app runs on your local machine.

Note: When you install EVE-OS on your edge nodes, the Edge View server image is also installed with it.

ZEDEDA Cloud is the controller in the operation of Edge View. You use it to define Edge View policies and generate JWTs (JSON Web Token) timeout values. These configurations are sent to your edge nodes. When your edge nodes receive your Edge View configurations, they set up connections to a dispatcher service and are ready to receive requests from your client application.

Note: By sharing your JWTs amongst your engineers, they can all access your edge nodes through Edge View simultaneously.

Edge View establishes a TCP channel that connects your local machine's TCP service to the remote device's TCP service acrdocker run -it zededa/zcli:latest

For more about Edge View’s architecture, refer to the LF Edge Edge View Architecture documentation.

Using Edge View

To use Edge View, you first need to activate it on your edge nodes. You can activate Edge View at the project level or the node level. When Edge View is activated at the project level, all nodes in that project can run it. If you then, however, deactivate Edge View on a set of nodes in that project, you will not be able to run it on those nodes. Node-level configuration override project-level configurations.

After you enable Edge View on the edge nodes that you want to access, you’ll need to download the client script from ZEDEDA Cloud or from one of your edge nodes. You can use either the ZEDEDA GUI or the ZCLI.

There are other means to connect remotely with your edge assets, such as SSH or SD-WAN. For detailed information about why you would want to use Edge View instead of these other methods, see the LF Edge FAQ.

Prerequisites

To run the Edge View client script on Windows OS, you need to have Docker or WSL v2 installed.

Use Edge View: GUI

Enable Edge View for a project

1. Log in to your ZEDEDA Cloud enterprise.
2. Click on Administration
3. Click on Projects
4. Select your project
5. Click on Policies
6. Click on the Pencil Icon (Edit)
7. Enable the Edge View Policy option

Enable Edge View for an edge node

1. Log in to your ZEDEDA Cloud enterprise.
2. Click on the Edge Nodes tab
3. Select the edge device
4. In the Status Tab, scroll to the bottom
5. Click on Activate Session

Download and run the Edge View script

1. Download the script.
2. Give execute permission to the script.

   chmod +x <SCRIPT_NAME>

3. Run the script.

   ./<SCRIPT_NAME>

Use Edge View: ZCLI

For your reference, the LF Edge wiki has a full list edge view commands.

By default, the Edge View configuration for projects and edge nodes is “edgeviewAllow: false”.

Check the status of Edgeview for a project

In a ZCLI session, run the following commands:

1. Log in to the ZCLI.

2. Check the status of Edge View for your project:

   zcli project show PROJECT_NAME --edgeview

Enable Edge View for a project

1. Create a local file in the directory of your choice with the following name:

   vi enable-edgeview.json

2. Add the following JSON content to the file and save.

   {
   "type": "POLICY_TYPE_EDGEVIEW",
      "edgeviewPolicy": {
          "edgeviewAllow": true
      }
   }

3. Add your new configuration to your project.

   zcli project update PROJECT_NAME --policy-config=edgeview:enable-edgeview.json

4. Verify that Edgeview is now enabled for your project.

   zcli project show PROJECT_NAME --edgeview

Enable Edge View for an Edge Node

In your terminal, run the following commands:

1. Check the Edgeview configuration of your edge node.

   zcli edge-node show EDGE_NODE_NAME --edgeview

2. Enable Edgeview.

   zcli edge-node start-edgeview EDGE_NODE_NAME

3. Verify that Edgeview is enabled on your edge node.

   zcli edge-node show EDGE_NODE_NAME --edgeview

Download the run-script

The Edgeview run-script can be downloaded to a local directory of your choice using the ZCLI.

Note: You can also find it in your edge node’s root directory.

To downloaded the script automatically, you need to mount a local directory onto your ZCLI session. Then, when you enable Edge View through the ZCLI, a copy of the script will be copied into your mounted directory.

The run script will use the following naming convention:

run.EDGE_NODE_NAME.SESSION_ID.edgeview.sh

To automatically receive a local copy of the script, follow these steps:

1. Use the following command to start your ZCLI session.

   docker run -it zededa/zcli:latest

2. Enable Edge View on your project or edge node through the ZCLI.
3. Find the run script in your local directory.

Terminate a session

Run the following command:

zcli edge-node stop-edgeview EDGE_NODE_NAME

Next steps

Read about Edge Access, our BETA GUI for Edge View.