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The Agent and Operations Plugins

The agent and the operation plugins are the main components used by thin-edge.io to enable edge device management from various clouds on diverse hardware, giving the cloud operators a uniform interface to install software packages, update configuration files, inspect log files, restart devices ...

The API between the mappers and the agent is designed to abstract device location, operating system, file system and hardware. Any service securely connected to the local MQTT bus can trigger commands as well as respond to commands.

  • The agent and the operation plugins interact with the operating system, running the appropriate sequences of checks and actions in response to command requests initiated by mappers on behalf of cloud operators.
  • tedge-agent is the out-of-the-box implementation of the device management APIs provided by thin-edge.io. It can run on the main device as well as child devices. It can be replaced with any other user-developed components that implement these device management APIs addressing specific requirements or hardware.
  • thin-edge.io also provides the tools to define, extend and combine user-defined operation workflows that rule the sequence of steps applied when an operation is triggered by an operator or a software component.
  • MQTT is used to declare which operations are supported by each device, to trigger commands and to monitor their progress upto completion.
  • HTTP is used to transfer files between devices independently of their file systems.