Fleet operations #

These guides are for people who organise and act across the installed base: provisioning, identity, tags, fleet jobs, OS image rollouts, status, and peer drift. Use Production operations when the job is logs, monitors, incidents, or customer support, or Operate Linux devices to choose across all operating jobs. Use the product activation path when the job is defining what the customer buys.

What you need #

You need to	Open
Bake the agent into a factory image	Install on many devices
Build and sign RAUC OS firmware	RAUC firmware and signing
Decide how RAUC fits into fleet management	Manage RAUC updates across a fleet
Qualify an A/B OS image for managed updates	RAUC image OTA requirements
Stage a production image rollout safely	Stage a RAUC rollout
Prove what happened after a RAUC rollout	Verify RAUC rollout outcomes
Choose between RAUC and Mender	RAUC vs Mender
Claim or reprovision a unit after it ships	Provision and claim
Spot drift against peer devices	Device Class Pulse
Group devices by customer, site, or environment	Networks and tags
Run a guarded command across a cohort	Fleet jobs
Get told when units go dark	Online/offline notifications
Drive the fleet from a workstation	Command-line tools

RAUC and OS image rollouts #

If RAUC is already part of your product, start with the customer decision rather than the implementation checklist:

How do I manage RAUC updates across a fleet? - keep RAUC on the device and add targeting, rollout, durable outcomes, and fleet decisions around it.
How do I build and sign RAUC firmware? - create the CA and signing certificate, bake the device keyring, configure the Device Class keyring, and provision each agent.
How should I stage a RAUC rollout across production devices? - canaries, bounded cohorts, outcome gates, and conservative pause rules.
How do I know whether a RAUC rollout actually worked? - distinguish install, boot, validation, rollback, unknown state, and post-release health.
RAUC vs Mender - choose the ownership boundary that fits your product rather than comparing OTA feature checklists.
RAUC image OTA requirements - the concrete Device Class image, bootloader, persistence, delta, and physical qualification contract.

Guides #

Guide	Description
Installing for mass production	Bake the agent into factory images.
RAUC firmware and signing	Build `.raucb` firmware, configure certificates and keyrings, and keep agent provisioning separate.
Manage RAUC updates across a fleet	Add fleet orchestration around an existing RAUC device architecture.
Stage a RAUC rollout	Use explicit cohorts and outcome gates before expanding a release.
Verify RAUC rollout outcomes	Reconcile success, rollback, validation, unknown state, and release health.
RAUC vs Mender	Decide between a RAUC-plus-fleet architecture and an end-to-end OTA platform.
RAUC image OTA requirements	Run `dataplicity rauc-ready`, then qualify layout, persistence, casync, bootloader rollback, and physical lab evidence.
Provision and claim	Identity, claiming, and handoff after manufacture.
Device Class Pulse	Learn class normal from peer devices and spot drift.
Networks and tags	Scope devices and networks for search and access.
Tags and inventory	Classify, search, and filter devices at scale.
Fleet jobs	Guarded commands across a selected cohort.
Online/offline notifications	Get notified when device status changes.
Command-line tools	Install the workstation CLI or use the in-app Web CLI.

Build a customer product #

Product definition and customer handover use the same connected devices but a different job path:

For one complete article from bench hardware to customer handover, use:

Production guides #

For the end-to-end lifecycle and release gate, see Production rollout. Use Production operations for logs, monitors, incident response, and support procedures.

Concepts #

SiloSentry - fictional OEM walkthrough of fleet inventory, Pulse, and fleet jobs (illustrative)
Illustrative customers
Business workflows