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How Containers Improve the Management of Embedded Linux Distros for IoT

The embedded Linux appliance industry is changing from making innovative apps for low-cost, low-spec devices to one where powerful hardware runs more complex applications. While resource-intensive devices will become the norm, the low-end will still be the ones delivering the volume and the backbone of the consumer industry in today’s embedded Linux Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. With the explosion of the connected IoT on the intelligent edge, it’s more important than ever to keep devices up to date and secure. We discuss the challenges faced by embedded engineers on managing firmware and their apps on low-spec embedded devices. Finally, we’ll describe how containers and other cloud-native technologies can help automate and make IoT Linux distros secure and portable.  

Top Three Challenges in Managing Low-Spec Embedded Devices

#1. Keeping Embedded Systems Lean Across Diverse Hardware

Most embedded devices for IoT are single-function and single-purpose, and they are fitted with minimal hardware capabilities that support their intended purpose. In addition, the diverse set of hardware can have limited flash memory with a minimum of 32 MB of NAND, NOR, or EMMC storage with a minimum RAM of 64 MB. These constraints, as well as the diversity of hardware, can limit its processing and networking capability. 

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LXC vs. Docker – What Do You Need For IoT?

Containers are at the center of agile software development. They’ve shifted from being a fringe open source technology to the building blocks that power modern software systems. With the Internet of Things (IoT), pioneering companies in the space are now looking to containers to extend the benefits of DevOps to the unique requirements of embedded systems. 

As enterprises look to scale up the capabilities of their IoT environments, popular container technologies like LXC or Linux Containers and Docker top the list. You may have heard of these two technologies, but may not know what the differences are. 

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Linux Container CPU: How to Optimize Real-Time and I/O-Intensive Environments

Ideally, highly-threaded I/O intensive Linux containers running on Kubernetes would have all the CPU time they need. But just how compatible is that goal with reality? To find the answer – and optimize Linux containers – application developers and DevOps teams must understand how Linux schedules tasks and allocates them CPU time.

The goal behind “real-time” containers is enabling your most important containers – those with mission-critical requirements around time-sensitive performance and reliability – to share the same hardware as non-real-time containers. But before committing to this strategy, it’s important to first determine how practical and achievable this is. In a strategy reliant on real-time containers, under-resourcing those containers could produce application performance shortfalls and hamper security efforts.