Addons

Plugins vs Extensions#

Addons fall into two primary categories in Oakestra:

• Plugins: Components that replace or augment core functionalities. E.g. a scheduler that accounts for energy consumption
• Extensions: Components that introduce entirely new capabilities outside of the core functionalities. E.g. FLOps

Addon System Design#

Addons in Oakestra are modular components that extend the platforms core functionality while keeping the foundational architecture lightweight. This design ensures that Oakestra remains efficient, avoiding unnecessary bloat in edge computing environments.

Addons system is composed of two subsystems:

• Addons Marketplace: Consists of Marketplace Manager and MongoDB client.
• Addons Engine: Consists of Addons Manager, Addons Monitor, and MongoDB Client.

Addons Marketplace#

The addons marketplace allows developers to publish their addons for Oakestra as docker images. The marketplace subsystem offers API endpoints for developers to publish their addons. Upon receiving a request for registering an addon, the marketplace asynchronously checks if the image is valid. Once it’s verified, the addon’s state in the database changes from under_review to approved or failed_verification.

Addons Engine#

The addons engine is composed of two main components:

• Addons manager: handles user requests for installing and uninstalling addons.
• Addons monitor: is responsible for continually monitoring and managing the state of addons. This includes handling execution, monitoring, and reporting of addon statuses to ensure that addons are running as expected and reporting any failures to the addons manager. The Addons Monitor performs the following checks:
  • Install check: Retrieves all addons from the addons manager that need installing.
  • Uninstall check: Retrieves all addons from the addons manager that need uninstalling.
  • Cleanup check: Communicates with underlying container engines to retrieve all running addons and validates these addons with the addons manager. The purpose of this is to check if an addon was deleted from the database in the Addons Manager.

Addon Lifecycle Management#

The lifecycle of an addon, from creation to deployment, is managed by the addons engine and the addons marketplace. This design allows for hot-swapping, where new features can be added or swapped without disrupting core services.

When installing an addon, the Addons Engine checks if a similar core component is running. If that’s the case, the core component is stopped and the addon is run in its place. In this scenario the addon inherits the port mappings and network specifications of the core component. If no core component exists then it’s an extension and no component is replaced.