VMware Project Keswick is an edge workload platform that brings the benefits of desired state configuration and GitOps to all your edge devices and workloads.

Project Keswick combines VMware industry leading virtualization technology with the efficiency of GitOps to power your edge workloads at scale, whether they have network connectivity or not. Project Keswick provides a secure, performant, deterministic way to enable hundreds to thousands of edge deployments with simplicity.

Project Keswick is designed for edge devices enhanced with GitOps workflows for deterministic and declarative management through a cloud control plane.

With Project Keswick, you can now update your entire edge site automatically, including infrastructure and applications by updating manifest files in a Git repository with the desired state for their fleet of devices connected to it. When connected to the network, Project Keswick hosts connect to the repository and enact the desired state, enabling these hosts to ensure the edge site remains as desired until a new version of the manifest files are made available for them to use.

What can I use Project Keswick for?

Project Keswick has been designed with the following use cases and objectives in mind:

  • Enable edge locations to aggregate edge functions by running consolidated containerized and virtual machine based workloads on a small footprint.

  • Define every aspect of your edge location through code and keep the edge site running as expected throughout its life cycle.

  • Simplify workload management by bringing zero touch provisioning and DevOps best practices to your edge fleet.

  • Eliminate bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your existing edge processes.

  • Create the foundation for strong communication and feedback between application teams and edge infrastructure management teams.

  • Deploy small form factor, ruggedized devices that have intermittent network connectivity.

  • Get the full benefits of desired state configuration to define both your infrastructure and applications and use Keswick to scale it across thousands of devices.

  • Support Day 2 operations for the edge and help your team to rapidly patch, upgrade, and secure the thousands of devices.

  • Automate application recovery with self-healing edge nodes when outages occur.

  • Bring your edge deployments into existing DevOps workflows that succeed in the data center, while also providing flexibility for the idiosyncrasies of each site.

Who should use Project Keswick?

The following roles would benefit most from the use of Project Keswick:

  • Edge Infrastructure Admin. The edge infrastructure administrator, or central IT team can get the most value out of using Keswick to manage their edge fleet and provide the operating environment to help edge application developers succeed.

  • Edge Site Worker. With Project Keswick, on-site employees and contractors do not need to have technical skills to make their IT systems effective. Plug and play power and networking brings up the device ready for centrally managed configuration. With Keswick, on-site staff can spend less time worrying about IT and more time solving customer or business problems.

  • Application Owners / DevOps. Develop, install, and support the apps which are used to run the connected devices or provide business value. Keswick reduces the time to deploy, patch and upgrade apps on edge devices. Keswick provides support for both containerized and VM based workloads.