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Ioto Device Clouds

Device clouds are management hubs from which you can centrally operate and manage one more more devices.

A device cloud stores device data, manages communications with your devices and provides a device management application to manage devices. By aggregating critical device data in the cloud, you can easily manage your devices and extract important data analytics and intelligence from your devices.

You can create one or more device clouds to segment the management of your products and devices.

Builder Dashboard

Device Cloud Services

The Ioto device cloud performs the following services:

  • Create and configure the necessary cloud resources for device management.
  • Automatically provision Ioto-based devices with certificates for secure communications.
  • Setup MQTT communications between devices and the cloud.
  • Create and maintain a cloud-based device database store for centralized management and analytics.
  • Create a secure device manager application for managing single devices or fleets of devices.

Device Cloud Types

Ioto supports three types of device clouds:

Type Description
eval Cloud for evaluating Ioto
hosted Cloud hosted in an EmbedThis AWS account
dedicated Cloud hosted in your own AWS account

When creating a device cloud, the Builder will create all the necessary resources for IoT management. This process results in a configured, complete, integrated and live IoT cloud capability.

Eval Cloud

The Eval cloud will probably be your first experience with Ioto device clouds.

The evaluation cloud is a shared device cloud that is intended for the short term evaluation of a few devices. It enables you to connect a device running the Ioto agent to the cloud and to receive device data and manage the device.

The Eval cloud is free to use for a few devices for a short period of time for evaluation purposes.

Hosted Device Clouds

A hosted device cloud is a device cloud for your devices and customers that is hosted by EmbedThis on secure AWS IoT infrastructure. You do not need to have or manage your own AWS account to use a hosted device cloud.

Device data goes directly from your devices to the device cloud in the region you select when creating the device cloud. Data does not transit other regions or third-party services. This is important as jurisdictions are increasingly requiring that data only be stored, processed and managed locally.

Unlike other IoT services, Ioto provides decreased latency by locating device data in a region close to you. This lowers cost and boosts performance of your cloud-based management solution.

Hosted device clouds are limited to a maximum of 1,000 devices. If you expect to exceed this number of devices over the lifetime of your product, you should use a dedicated device cloud for your production deployment.

A hosted device cloud provides:

  • AWS DynamoDB database exclusively for your device data.
  • AWS DynamoDB streams to replicate device data to and from the cloud.
  • AWS API Gateway to authorize remote API access to device data.
  • AWS Cognito User Pool to authenticate user access.
  • AWS CloudFront and S3 site for the Ioto Device Manager site.
  • AWS Route53 domain for the Ioto Device Manager site.
  • AWS Lambda functions for cloud-side device management.
  • AWS IoT Core policies and message routing rules.
  • AWS IoT Things to model your devices in the cloud.

Dedicated Device Clouds

A dedicated device cloud is created in your AWS account so you have the ultimate in the control and privacy of your device data. With a dedicated device cloud, device data goes directly from your devices to the device cloud in your AWS account. The device data is not sent through EmbedThis servers. The data is encrypted throughout and you have total control.

Dedicated clouds support an enhanced set of AWS services beyond those available with hosted device clouds. These include:

  • Device log file capture and storage in AWS CloudWatch logs
  • Audit operations via AWS CloudTrail
  • Device AWS keys to initiate AWS API operations from the device
  • Ability to have server-side custom logic responding to device events

If you expect to create more than 1,000 devices over the lifetime of your product, you should use a dedicated device cloud for your production deployment as hosted device clouds are limited to 1,000 devices.

Device Manager

For each device cloud you can create one or more Device Manager apps from which to manage your devices. The Ioto Device Manager is a generic, white-labeled device manager that is uniquely configured for your devices. It can extensively customized with your logo, product name, device data and device specific screens and interface including custom logic.

The Ioto Device Manager apps are hosted by Embedthis on a sub-domain of your choosing under the ioto.me domain. You can select a unique sub-domain that reflects your company or product's brand. Alternately, you can choose and associate a custom domain name.

Device Certificates

Devices require X.509 certificates to securely connect and communicate with the cloud. The certificates are used to uniquely identify and authenticate devices and then to encrypt communications to prevent tampering or eavesdropping.

Ioto will automatically create and distribute the required certificates as devices are assigned to a device cloud. This eliminates the pain of certificate distribution.

Device Communications

During device provisioning, the Ioto service will setup the necessary AWS resources to enable secure efficient messaging via AWS IoT core using the MQTT protocol.

MQTT is a messaging protocol for IoT. It is a lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport that is ideal for connecting remote devices.

When connected, your management applications can control devices, send commands and retrieve data using the MQTT messaging service.

Device Data Aggregation

Collecting, aggregating and sending device data to a central management store can be complex and costly. Ioto takes the hassle out of exporting device data to the cloud by synchronizing the Ioto device agent database with an AWS DynamoDB database in your device cloud.

Data written on the device to the management database will be transparently exported to the cloud. Similarly, data written to the cloud database will be distributed to the appropriate devices as required. No programming is required.

The database synchronization is full-duplex in that data can be modified in the device or in the cloud and it will be replicated to the other side. The synchronization is controllable on a per-device and per-table basis.

This is similar to AWS Global Tables, but instead of acting inside AWS between AWS regions, it is between an AWS region and a device.

This replicated device database is unique to Ioto and dramatically simplifies the creation of IoT solutions.

Device Metrics and Analytics

AWS provides a comprehensive metric service via CloudWatch Metrics. The Ioto agent can emit metrics that will be captured by the device cloud and managed by CloudWatch.

Using these metrics, you can create detailed device analytics and dashboards to focus on any aspect of your device or fleet performance.

Device Access Keys

For dedicated device clouds, Ioto can optionally create and manage AWS IAM access keys for your devices. AWS uses IAM access keys to authenticate and authorize actors on AWS resources. The Ioto device cloud can create specific IAM keys to enable devices to issue requests to the device cloud and AWS services.

The Ioto generated temporary IAM access keys have tightly controlled access permissions. The keys are automatically reissued as required and can be centrally controlled.

Device Logging

For dedicated device clouds, device logs and files can be captured and sent to AWS CloudWatch logs for storage, governance and analysis.

The Ioto agent can be configured without coding, to capture any O/S log or program output and send it to CloudWatch Logs. The Ioto agent log is similarly exportable.