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Step 3. Shipment

In step 2, the customer specified the placement that they want and gave the shipping instructions. Now the ball is back in provider's court.

Node​

The provider assigns actual nodes (ie servers) to the customer. They do so by publishing the node object in the repository. It represents a real computer with model and serial number. You can see a node object example.

/edgecell-mcdougals/nodes/gluebook33.yaml

apiVersion: edgecell.io/v1
kind: Node
metadata:
  name:  gluebook33
  namespace: mcdougals.com
  uuid: baf25062-1a1a-4a62-8fa2-233187c405e3
  labels:
    customer: mcdougals.com
  annotations:
    model: UNO-148-B33BA
    serialnumber: 09234092
spec:
  type: edgecell.io/aa1
  image: edgecell.io/aa1:2.0.9
  network:
    addr: 10.0.12.123
status:
  built: true
  shipped: true

Note that yaml enables multiple objects in a file, so all three could have been expressed in a single file. We can also create folders for nesting however we want. Everything is how it is most convenient for your team.

Shipment​

The provider has also published a shipment object.

/edgecell-mcdougals/shipment/2023W08/pilot.yaml

apiVersion: edgecell.io/v1
kind: Shipment
metadata:
  name: mcdougals-2023W09-1
  namespace: edgecell.io
  uuid: b23bc21b-d61f-4b18-b3e0-43a103a73185
  labels:  
    week: 2023W09
    customer: mcdougals.com
spec:
  schedules:
    - mcdougals.com/pilot01
  nodes:
    - mcdougals.com/gluebook33
    - mcdougals.com/greymane95
    - mcdougals.com/loadfred24
  address: |-
    Steve Lobinowitz
    McDougals Inc
    2700 West University
    Denton, TX 76201
  tracking: https://www.fedex.com/fedextrack/?trknbr=93001903009002813509364926/
status:
  state: delivered
  packed: 2023-02-23
  shipped: 2023-02-23
  delivered: 2023-02-28

Multiple placements could have the same shipping address. You see it completed, but the provider should be making updates to the file as events happen. The customer can track the shipment as this document is updated.

As you see, a lot of information is repeated in the different objects. For instance, the shipping address is repeated several times. The VS Code tools keep the user from having to retype these fields. However, versioning in Git will define differences or breaks. If the fields are different, the tools will flag as an error to address.

Weeks​

A note about shipping schedules. A month is too flexible and a day is too precise. When dealing with international deployments, no one can plan delivery to the day. Customs, you know. So, the compromise is by week. ISO week specifies not only how to express the week but also how to calculate it.

In our example, the schedule was 2023W09 which is Monday, 2023-02-27 (Feb 27) to Sunday, 2023-03-05 (Mar 5).

You can calulate weeks at https://planetcalc.com/8540/