Architecture¶
The MetalSoft is a hardware & software orchestration solution that enables cloud-like consumption of physical resources such as switches, servers and storages. It has been designed to handle both hyper-scale cloud data-centers but also highly distributed “edge” deployments. There is a global “controller” which registers user’s intent and determines the changes that need to happen within the infrastructure and there are many site controllers that will effect that change on the physical infrastructure.
The Site Controllers are usually deployed as a VM that runs many Data Center Agents which are docker agents with various functions such as DHCP, HTTP proxy etc.
The data center agents are lightweight semi-independent pieces of software that act on behalf of the “core”. They “phone home” to create a connection to the core on which new configurations can be pushed down. They are able to survive disconnected from the core indefinitely. They update themselves if needed and need no manual maintenance and no firewall ports open. They will attempt to recover from a failed update and will keep reconnecting indefinitely in the event of a core or network failure. During the downtime there is no impact on the running infrastructure.
Important
Note that the Site Controller was previously called ‘Agent’ and may be referred to using the old name through this documentation. We apologize for the inconvenience. We will be updating the documentation shortly.