Edges

By default, Plakar Control Plane (PCP) executes every scheduled task from the appliance itself. This works well for small deployments, but larger or distributed environments often require task execution closer to the data.

An edge is a remote executor that registers with PCP and performs operations on its behalf. Deploying edges inside the networks where your data resides allows tasks to run locally without requiring PCP to have direct network access to every resource.

Edges improve scalability by distributing work across multiple executors while also allowing backups of resources located behind private networks, firewalls, or NAT gateways.

sequenceDiagram
  participant Edge as plakar-edge
  participant PCP as Plakar Control Plane
  participant Target as Source / store app

  Note over Edge,PCP: Enrollment (one-time)
  Edge->>PCP: Register with enrollment key
  PCP-->>Edge: Auth token

  Note over Edge,PCP: Scheduled task run
  PCP->>Edge: Assign task (backup, restore, sync, check)
  PCP-->>Edge: Resolve and provide required secrets
  Edge->>Target: Perform operation locally
  Target-->>Edge: Result
  Edge-->>PCP: Report task result

An edge must have network access to:

• The Plakar Control Plane over HTTP.
• The systems or services it will back up or restore.

The edge receives tasks from PCP, performs them locally, and reports the results back to the Control Plane.

The source code is available from PlakarKorp/plakar-edge. Currently, plakar-edge must be built from source:

make
# or
go build -o plakar-edge .

Prebuilt binaries will be available in a future release, and edge functionality will eventually be integrated directly into the plakar binary.

Edge enrollment is disabled by default. To enable it:

1. Open Settings.
2. Select the General tab.
3. Under Edge Enrollment, click Configure.
4. Enable enrollment.

PCP generates an enrollment key that new edges use to register themselves. You can regenerate the key at any time or disable enrollment.

Run the edge with:

plakar-edge \
  -control-plane https://plakman.example.com \
  -enroll <enrollment-key> \
  -name edge-paris-1 \
  -state-dir /var/lib/plakar-edge \
  -pkg /var/lib/plakar-edge/pkgs

After a successful enrollment, the edge stores its authentication token in -state-dir. Future restarts reuse this token, so the -enroll option is no longer required unless the edge is re-enrolled.

When an edge executes a task, PCP resolves the required secrets and securely provides them to the edge for the duration of that task. This includes repository credentials such as the repository passphrase.

Scheduled tasks run on the PCP appliance by default. To execute a task on an edge instead, select the desired edge in the Advanced section when creating or editing a scheduled task. See Scheduled Tasks documentation for more information.