EdgeConnect

Overview

EdgeConnect is a custom cloud provided by the project as a whole. It has several goals, including retaining sovereign control over cloud compute resources, and supporting sustainability-aware infrastructure choices.

While EdgeConnect is managed outwith our Edge Developer Platform, we have produced a number of tools to facilitate its use and broaden its applicability. These are an SDK, command-line client, bespoke provider for Terraform, and tailor-made Forgejo Actions.

The diagram summarizes how EdgeConnect is typically consumed and operated. Developers and automation do not interact with edge clusters directly; instead they use stable entry points (CLI, SDK, Terraform) that talk to the EdgeConnect API.

EdgeConnect itself is shown as a single cloud boundary that contains the control plane (API + controllers) and the managed resource model (e.g., App, AppInstance). Controllers continuously reconcile the desired state expressed via the API and drive deployments into the runtime.

EDP appears here as an external consumer: it can automate provisioning and deployment workflows (for example via Terraform) while EdgeConnect remains a separately managed cloud. This separation clarifies responsibilities: EDP orchestrates delivery processes, EdgeConnect provides the target runtime and lifecycle management.

Key Features

• Managed by the broader project, not specifically by EDP
• Focus on sovereignty and sustainability
• Utilities such as CLI and Terraform provider encourage widespread platform use
• EDP products such as Forgejo are hosted on OTC rather than EdgeConnect

Purpose in EDP

EdgeConnect is documented here because it is a key deployment target and integration point for the broader platform. Even though EdgeConnect is operated separately from EDP (and core EDP services are hosted on OTC), EDP tooling and automation frequently needs to provision or deploy workloads into EdgeConnect in a consistent, repeatable way.

Working with EdgeConnect also helps ensure that our developer workflows and platform components remain portable and “cloud-ready” beyond a single environment. By integrating with a sovereign system and making sustainability-aware choices visible in practice, we align platform engineering with the project’s wider goals and enable closer collaboration with the teams operating the EdgeConnect cloud.

Access

• Gardener console access
  • Choose Log in with mg3 then platform before entering credentials set up by the Platform Team.
• Edge cluster
• Orca cluster

Notes

Documentation for EdgeConnect is provided using other systems, including Confluence.