Need to register 1000 devices? Or 10 000...

A lot of devices

You know already that MAMAS can handle lots of devices (like: 0.7.0 was tested to handle 30 000 devices) but in case you have a higher number of devices - like more than 20 or 100 - you were probably wondering how to install them?

The usual way of installing agent on a device is by logging into the device web interface and uploading the package. While that works, it becomes boring with 10 devices and unbearable with 100. Not even thinking about 1 000 or 10 000.

If your admis are creative, they can come up with a script trying to automate the task by using ssh to remotely access the devices and install the agents using command line. Well - that's actually the way we are going to describe here but the point is that you have no longer to develop the tool for yourself - it's here, delivered by MAMAS producer and what's more - it's supported.

Originally, the PUSH installation mode was targeted at MAMAS version 0.8.0. That's still valid but seeing the 0.8 is still several months in the future, we decided to spin-off a lightweight version for 0.7.x branch.

This tool will become part of the distribution with version 0.7.4 but you can as well download it separately and use it on existing 0.7.3 deployment.

The PUSH usually requires the devices to be reachable from the server. Which means - if your devices are on the same network as the server is, you are fine. If they are behind a NAT on a separate network, you are probably out of luck (unless there is port-forwarding setup and the ssh port of the device is reachable from outside network).

Well, not really true for our tool!

You can safely use it directly on your MAMAS server if you are on the same network as your devices are.

But you can also copy the tool, together with agent archives found on your server, on e.g. a notebook that you can later connect to the network where your devices are present, and install all of the agents from the notebook. This way you bypass the limitation requiring all the devices being reachable from the server.

All you require is a Linux box (or a Linux VM running on a Windows notebook)  you can run the tool on.

But there is even more good news - the tool works in a parallel fashion, allowing to run several installations at the same time. What does it mean?

Let's say that one device installation process can take 30 seconds. In that case, 1 000 devices takes roughly 10 hours. 10 000 takes more than 4 days. Are you going to stay 4 days connected to that network?

If not, then you can use one of the goodies - paralell installation. Run 2 installation processes at the same time and you cut the time in half. 2 days still seems a lot, so let's run 10 at the same time and you get to roughly 8 hours.

Even that could be a time-too-long and now comes the second goodie - you can leave it running for some time and then interrupt the process. The tool will create files listing the successful and the failed devices (including all skipped e.g. due to the lack of time). Next time you connect to the nework you just run the tool over the list of failed devices, resulting in installing the rest. Or a subset of the rest, leaving the rest for another next-time.

Want to find out more? Look at the instructions and download link for the tool here. Enjoy!