{"id":10284,"date":"2018-05-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/threecloud.wpengine.com\/post\/device-management-with-azure-iot-hub\/"},"modified":"2022-11-30T09:13:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T15:13:01","slug":"device-management-with-azure-iot-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/resources\/device-management-with-azure-iot-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Device Management with Azure IoT Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a separate post, I covered what Azure IoT Hub is and what it brings. Today I\u2019m going a bit deeper and talking about how the devices you\u2019re bringing to the table get managed. IoT Hub provides the features and extensibility that enables devices, as well as the people who program those devices and their architectures, with a robust device management solution.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CPhZghTxHvQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Devices are all over the place; they are sensors, microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi computers. It\u2019s also the gateways that route the communications for groups of devices. They\u2019re installed on a local network and can work in peer to peer networks or have a router that passes information back and forth.<\/p>\n<p>Azure IoT Hub offers a flexible platform for the many different uses across many different industries and devices themselves to be able to have that compatibility no matter the industry you\u2019re in. No matter what you\u2019re using the devices for, a significant part lies in the planning of how the devices and gateways will work together in the IoT Hub.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s look at some things to be aware of:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Device Management Principles<\/strong> \u2013 Here you\u2019ve got your scale and automation. You need to have simple tools to automate routine tasks. And you need the ability to manage millions of devices simply, as well as remotely and in bulk, so you can make sweeping changes across a whole suite of devices.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, you don\u2019t need to be alerted for every change or notification, but you do need to be alerted when there\u2019s a problem. There are many different devices, protocols and patterns. IoT Hub needs to accommodate all those changes; with the wide range of devices from single process chips to fully functional computers, we need to have the flexibility to accommodate those systems.<\/p>\n<p>Other things you need to know are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Context awareness to accommodate the SLA and maintenance windows for when there\u2019s downtime.<\/li>\n<li>The network and power states.<\/li>\n<li>The in-use conditions \u2013 What are the expectations while the devices themselves are working?<\/li>\n<li>Where the device is \u2013 Is it in a building or out in the field on a utility pole?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These devices serve many roles and must work within the IT operations of your group. They need to be easily managed from that group or an extension from that group, as well as be able to surface alerts when it\u2019s required. Most importantly, this all needs to work within your internal IT ecosystem to keep that continuity and consistency inside the business.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Device Lifecycle<\/strong> \u2013 So, we start with a plan \u2013 how will we use the devices; how will they be managed; and what will the devices be for our specific instance? Next, we need to provision them by adding them into the IoT Hub identity registry, so when we get to the next step they are being acknowledged in the system. Our next step is to configure them. We want to maintain the health of the device, even when we\u2019re doing these updates and configurations, and we can send confirm updates securely.<\/p>\n<p>Also, we need to monitor the device\u2019s health to be aware if it\u2019s beginning to fail. Many are small, simple devices that have a certain lifespan. We also monitor the status of the device and we need the ability to get alerts when the device begins to have issues. Then, ultimately, we need to remove old devices that are no longer effective so they\u2019re not showing up or cluttering up the space of that IoT Hub interface.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Device Management Patterns<\/strong> \u2013 How are we interacting with devices after they\u2019ve been deployed? So, if you\u2019re going to reboot, factory reset or redeploy a device, you\u2019ll need to reconfigure it so that it can be brought back up in the system. You\u2019ll need to do simple configurations to change how the devices behave, and these need to be done in bulk.<\/p>\n<p>To ensure you\u2019re staying on top of bug fixes and new functionality and features for your devices, you\u2019ll need to send firmware updates. Lastly, you need to show reporting progress and statuses of the devices themselves. It\u2019s important that you have visibility into how the devices are performing and know if there are any problems.<\/p>\n<p>This has been a high-level overview of device management with Azure IoT Hub. I hope you found it informative and helpful.<\/p>\n<p>Need further help? Our expert team and solution offerings can help your business with any Azure product or service, including Managed Services offerings. Contact us at 888-8AZURE or\u00a0 <a href=\"mailto:sales@3cloudsolutions.com\">sales@3cloudsolutions.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a separate post, I covered what Azure IoT Hub is and what it brings.&mldr;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":9566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-ai","topics-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3cloudsolutions.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}