Design Concepts of the ASSIST-IoT Smart Orchestrator for Managing the Realization of NGIoT Systems

This paper presents the design of the ASSIST-IoT's smart orchestrator. This solution aims at controlling the lifecycle of next-generation IoT enablers in distributed, multi-cluster environments, easing the communication of such enablers and increasing the overall network security. The presented high-level architecture is based on three main design concepts: cloud-nativeness, encapsulation, and automation. A preliminary realization of such architecture is described, along with some graphical interfaces specifically developed to manage it. Its practical use has served for validating its expected performance, allowing the instantiation and communication of enablers in Kubernetes-based distributed ecosystems, and has shown some potential areas of improvement: better support to broader number of use cases, optimization of installation procedures considering a unique packaging format, and enabling the integration of DevOps tools for both automated system and enablers' upgrading.