The UI should allow the creation of “smart groups” of devices. These would be defined not by a fixed array of devices, but by a set of rules (e.g. device_type ~= “raspberry” AND mender_client_version == “2.2.0”).
This would remove the need for user to manually add & remove devices from groups, which is time-consuming, and error-prone.
This is particularly useful for the management of:
Raspberry-Pi based devices, which sometimes require a dangerous, non-atomic bootfiles upgrade. Keeping track of which devices need such an upgrade would be much easier with smart device groups.
Mender configuration files migrations, which are also non-atomic. Keeping track of which devices need such an upgrade would also be much easier with smart device groups.
Thank you for the suggestion - the filter improvements I had in mind during embedded world & your email needed restructuring due to some necessary alignments with the backend functionality.
But it is currently undergoing final testing and soon going to be deployed to hosted Mender and should be part of the 2.4 release. Even though the ~= functionality will not be there initially (but it should follow shortly)…
With this we’ve also gotten the corresponding deployment functionality ready (since these smart device groups could have devices joining or changing during running deployments e.g.) - so it would be possible to automatically issue updates once a device joins one of these smart groups.
Due to the different tiers on hosted Mender I should clarify that the smart groups and dynamic deployments are an enterprise feature, while the rule based filtering is available in professional.
Useful precision!
It’s probably also useful to highlight that both use case I outlined above were not really entreprise requirements either. I don’t think Entreprise customers use a lot of Pi’s. And managing non-reversible Mender configuration files migrations, well… you get where I’m heading I’ll hope smart groups can trickle down to professional soon.
I’ll hope smart groups can trickle down to professional soon.