Edge Microvisor Toolkit Documentation#

Edge Microvisor Toolkit is an open-source, lightweight operating system based on Azure Linux, and optimized for Intel® architecture. As a container-first, immutable OS, it is a perfect foundation for high-performance edge computing workloads that benefit from scalability and ease of management. It supports various deployment models, from standalone evaluation to large production-grade systems (large-scale rollouts are possible with Open Edge Platform’s Edge Manageability Framework integration).

Edge Microvisor Toolkit is designed to enable the full potential of Intel® platform portfolio by integrating the Intel® kernel and offering the most recent features as soon as possible. It will unlock new functionalities before mainstream Linux distributions, while also including the existing functionality not downstreamed in the existing distributions.

Currently published default versions are:

If you need more than that, the build infrastructure of Edge Microvisor Toolkit enables you to create your own, custom images.

Why Use Edge Microvisor Toolkit#

Flexible
Build, customize and optimize the Microvisor to suit your specific requirements with a powerful build toolkit and validated images tailored to meet most demands.
Secure
Security opt-in methodology, enabling you to pick and choose what security features to enable, from Secure Boot, dm-verity for integrity protection or Full Disc Encryption for security-at-rest.
Small Footprint
Microvisor has a small footprint (350MB compressed, 750MB uncompressed), allowing for short deployment times and reduced attack vectors.
Flexible Deployments
Edge Microvisor supports deployment as containers, virtual machines and as Kubernetes workloads, ensuring support for modern cloud-edge native, as well as legacy applications.
Atomic Updates
Immutable images support A/B updates with short boot-up and update times ensuring integrity, eliminating configuration drift and minimizing downtime of workloads.
Automatic Rollback
Automatic rollback support provides operational assurance and recovery in case of failed updates.
Fully managed OS lifecycle
Integration with Edge Manageability Framework enables automated deployments, updates, and rollbacks without manual intervention.
Immutable design for security
Read-only system partitions prevent tampering, ensuring system integrity.
Optimized for Intel® hardware
Delivers performance enhancements tailored to Intel® silicon, ensuring maximum efficiency.
Scalability for large fleets
Centralized control through Edge Manageability Framework simplifies management across thousands of edge nodes.

Customers Highlights#

  • Edge Microvisor Toolkit as the edge OS with and without real time support.

  • Built-in support for Intel® platform features, Ethernet and GPU support.

  • Immutable OS with support for atomic (A/B) updates with Open Edge Platform.

  • Secure the edge platform with an opt-in security model supporting Secure Boot, Full Disc Encryption, dm-verity with TPM 2.0.

  • Can be deployed with Edge Manageability Framework or as a standalone OS.

Developers Highlights#

  • Flexible build infrastructure for creating custom images from a large set of pre-provisioned packages via .spec files.

  • Support for multiple image formats for use on bare-metal systems, virtual machines and containers (ISO, VHD, VHDX, RAW).

  • Supporting UKI (Unified Kernel Image) format with or without second stage bootloaders (GRUB, systemd-boot).

  • Supporting mutable developer ISO builds.

Key Performance Indicators#

  • Boot time of less than 8 seconds on entry level Intel® Core™ platforms.

  • Fast A/B image updates (<30s) with automatic rollback support on Edge Microvisor Toolkit.

  • Small footprint with less than 750MB of disk space required for the OS and under 350MB compressed RAW image size.

License Information#

Edge Microvisor Toolkit is based on Azure Linux, sharing its permissive open-source license: MIT.

For more details, see the LICENSE document.

Next Steps#

Architecture Overview