AWS IoT Greengrass is an open-source edge runtime and cloud service for building, deploying, and managing device software. The service provides a full-suite of AWS capabilities to edge devices (including local processing, messaging, data management, and more) to enable them to act locally on edge data. This allows the service to respond quickly to local events, while still using the cloud for management, analytics, and durable storage.

In this post, we’ll explore ways that EdgeIQ simplifies and scales AWS Greengrass implementations as part of a broader DeviceOps implementation.

EdgeIQ Seamlessly Deploys, Monitors & Updates AWS IoT Greengrass

Leveraging AWS IoT Greengrass begins with installing the service on your edge device or gateway. Today the process is complex and time-consuming, not only in activating the service but ensuring it is continuously running. It can also be a somewhat manual process, introducing potential errors at each implementation instance. EdgeIQ automates the process of deploying, monitoring and updating your AWS IoT Greengrass instance. This is done via EdgeIQ’s native integration capabilities and requires minimum technical intervention. The only effort required is to provide the appropriate account information within the EdgeIQ service, and this can be done via our API or rich web application.

Users no longer need to worry about establishing processes and allocating time to installation, monitoring, and maintenance of their AWS IoT Greengrass deployment. EdgeIQ’s native integration capabilities with a variety of AWS services, leveraging a bring your own account (BYOA) architecture, ensures your AWS IoT Greengrass installation is always up to date. If EdgeIQ detects, via its heartbeat monitoring feature, that your installation has stopped working, the platform can automatically create an alert and even trigger an automatic restart of AWS IoT Greengrass at the edge.

Automate Onboarding Of New Devices For Speed, Scalability, and Security

Deployed in parallel with AWS IoT Greengrass on your edge device or gateway, the EdgeIQ platform automates the onboarding process for hundreds or thousands of devices. The process of onboarding is very simple:

• EdgeIQ users onboard their devices to the EdgeIQ DeviceOps platform via the user interface, a CSV upload, or an API call;
• EdgeIQ creates a “Thing” definition within the customer’s AWS instance and receives the necessary keys from AWS so the platform can automatically configure the device when it is installed as part of the zero-touch provisioning process.
• When AWS creates the certificate associated with the "Thing", EdgeIQ stores the certificate as a ‘secret’ and then pushes it to the device as part of EdgeIQ’s device onboarding process. The implementation configures and manages the secure communication path directly from the edge to a customer’s AWS account and monitors the Greengrass installation itself.

At its core, EdgeIQ is automating the previously manual or code-intensive tasks of creating devices in your AWS account, storing and managing certificates, and establishing communication with newly activated devices in order to promptly and properly configure them. The DeviceOps platform allows customers to not only very quickly associate devices with their AWS IoT Greengrass account but do so securely and at scale. EdgeIQ’s zero-touch provisioning process for AWS IoT Greengrass is an extension of the same workflow orchestration that the technology natively provides, which includes initial configuration updates, heartbeat report management, and more.

Get Started Today

To get started, reach out to us at https://www.edgeiq.ai/contact