Device management

The roles of the devices and how they are managed is the key differentiator between IoT and non-IoT deployments. The stages of device life cycle management include device provisioning (registration, activation, and commissioning) to de-provisioning. The notation used for device management in this book is shown in the following diagram:

Figure 2.6 – Notation for the device management pattern

Device management includes firmware updates for the field devices, either on an ad hoc basis (for example, patching security vulnerabilities) or in a planned manner (pushing the latest configuration and/or firmware with the updated feature set). Due to the constrained nature of IoT devices, special considerations are required while updating firmware:

• The device shouldn’t be in the middle of a critical operation. Accordingly, the device’s current state (busy, idle, and so on) should be shared with the central server at regular...