Commendation on the Exceptional Platform, Build and Deployment Architecture - A Nokia ECE Team's Experience

[Amithpn]

Dear Intel Team,

After working on the Intel’s EMF platform deployment from past few days, I wanted to share my appreciation for the outstanding engineering effort that has gone into designing this solution. Here are the key highlights I want to point out which can make can user life easy (we can always argue on something but overall, it is to the point):

Well-Structured Modular Architecture

The separation of concerns is excellently implemented. The repository is organized with clear boundaries between:
• configurations for default services like ArgoCD, PostgreSQL, MetalLB, Harbor, Gitea, AWS Vaults etc
• ArgoCD applications with 80+ well-defined application manifests (sometimes very flexible to add custom changes)
• Installer tooling which has containerized deployment workflows
• Mage-based build automation
This modular approach makes it straightforward to understand, maintain, and extend individual components without impacting the entire system.

GitOps-First Deployment Model

The adoption of ArgoCD as the deployment backbone is a good choice(Because I know how easy it makes our life on day-to-day basis; it takes care of manual over head a team can have). The argocd applications structure with templated configurations gives lot of freedom on:
• Declarative, version-controlled deployments
• Easy rollback capabilities
• Clear visibility into deployment state
• Consistent environments across cloud and on-premises

Flexible Deployment Options

The framework supports multiple deployment targets seamlessly. We have used both the options and we know it works.
• Cloud deployments (AWS with Terraform)
• On-premises deployments (on-prem-installers libs)
This flexibility to choose multiple targets is crucial for addressing any customer requirements and development workflows.

Developer-Friendly Tooling

The system allowing complete source-to-deployment builds, combined with the mage targets for common operations (Installer:Build, Installer:Bundle, Deploy:OnPrem), significantly lowers the barrier to entry. The comprehensive Makefile with the clear progress tracking provides clear visibility into the deployment process.

CI/CD Integration

We could extract bare minimum steps from the documentation and deploy scripts to come up with the Jenkins CI Installer script, and it is working for us.

Documentation

Given the size of the product and amount of documentation required to put all the relevant information, it is very easy for anyone who is going through the documentation and get lost. But the relevant sections and link to next chapters helps user stay navigated. On top of all, we did not feel any information missing in the document. Kudos to the documentation effort. I know It takes lot of effort to put all the information which makes the end user life easy. And team has done great job here.

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In Summary: The GitOps approcah, combined with containerized tooling and multi-target support, creates a deployment experience that is both powerful for advanced users and approachable for newcomers. The team should be proud of this engineering achievement. The overall architecture strikes nice balance between flexibility and standardization.

[biapalmeiro]

Thanks for the partnership @Amithpn. Kudos @kblaszczak-intel for all the energy dedicated to the Documentation. It is paying off! ;)

[shanki1107]

@Amithpn was our lonewolf rider in the world of Cloud Ops and it was this Intel partnership which could help leapfrog into the CloudOps world to deploy this system in record 3-4hrs compared to weeks, our legacy systems usually take.

[biapalmeiro]

That's a statement! Glad to hear that. And definitely a topic to explore. @Amithpn I want to learn more about that, expect me to reach you out. :)

[Amithpn]

We took a dare step of adopting EMF and it was a landmark decision. Saved months of our effort and with such efficiency we really had to spend most of the time testing feature after feature. Mind boggling. Thank you entire EMF team. Great support. Wonderful journey, great collaboration. Many more to come.