Although DevOps is hot in the cloud space, it’s still just catching on in the internet of things world, where devices rule and requirements for reliability, quality, security and safety are paramount.
DevOps is not focused on any particular technology or app quality, but certain challenges arise when DevOps and IoT intersect. IoT is typically a three-tier architecture, consisting of a device, gateway and platform. There are constrained devices or really small sensors with not much processing power that will connect to some sort of gateways — also known as edge devices or smart devices — that have more processing power, perhaps something like a Raspberry Pi, for example. The gateway aggregates information from the different sensors and controls them. It also tracks the network and sends information to an IoT platform running somewhere in the cloud.
That IoT architecture complicates things for DevOps — particularly in deployment — where IoT applications reside in the cloud as well as on sensors embedded in machines that exist outside the DevOps team’s access or control, such as a consumer’s smart refrigerator. Thus, DevOps principles — like continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), as well as automated testing, deployment and telemetry — are difficult, but not impossible, challenges to overcome across the IoT architecture.
Source: TechTarget
