Mender blog

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...

Security and robustness is the prime directive of Mender in doing over-the-air software updates, and we work hard to make sure that directive never goes out of our sight.

Data breaches are the new norm and there are billions of breached logins on the web and in fact in 2017 Yahoo reported a breach of three billion user records. With these credentials in the wrong hands, the bad guys can hijac...

Delta update is a more efficient mechanism for updating software over-the-air (OTA) when using cellular networks (e.g. 4G/LTE) which enables faster downloads and bandwidth cost savings. Mender offers the ability to generate and only deploy the difference (delta) between the software version already on the devices and the new version, on the binary level. Depending on the cellular technology and ne...