Mender blog

Updating your device software, whether its system or application level, may seem an easy task to do when you first start your IoT project but then you realize what’s involved is more than just overwriting some files with new copies. What if the power goes out while the device is updating? What if the connectivity is lost due to poor network quality? What if a third party sends a fake update? What...

Embedded Linux devices are very fragmented in their design and implementation. At the basic level, they all have the following components:

Applications implement the primary functions of a device; they are ultimately what makes the end user benefit from using the device. Therefore, they are the most frequently updated software stack to fix bugs and to add new features. They could also be updat...

Mender project provides proof that golang and microservices architecture make a good pair. Together with MongoDB, web UI, and a bit of orchestration they are building blocks of a modern highly scalable and customizable over-the-air (OTA) software update solution. In this post I describe the challenges we faced in the implementation of one of the core elements we changed, one way of migrating to a...

As the number of connected devices increase, the operations and infrastructure needed to support continuous updates at scale is growing fast. Deploying to a large fleet of connected devices in the field with thousands or tens of thousands, can pose a significant risk of something going wrong.

Regardless of how well tested the software and update process is, you will only know how well the deployment works after it has been released into the field. Differences in time zones, network latency, hardware and customer usage patterns are all potential stumbling blocks preventing new software releases from behaving as expected. These factors can be impossible to predict. A failed update will result in negative customer experience and potentially high customer support costs. Worst case, collateral and brand damage might be at stake.

With the release of Mender Enterprise, feature such as phased rollout can help greatly mitigate the risk by deploying into time-delayed phases with customizable share of the devices being updated in each phase. Additionally, schedule deployments enable to set a start time for the deployment into the future, so customers are unlikely to be interrupted by the update, and your support staff does not need to be up at night to create and observe it.

Using binary deltas for applying updates is a more efficient mechanism for updating software over-the-air (OTA) which enables faster downloads and bandwidth cost saving for metered networks. When using cellular (e.g. 4G/LTE) or other bandwidth constrained networks, the impact is even greater. With the recently announced commercial editions, Mender offers the ability to generate and only deploy t...