Monitor and manage your fleet operations to maximize sustainability - Internet of Things (IoT) Lens

Monitor and manage your fleet operations to maximize sustainability

It is recommended that your solution be monitored and managed efficiently across its lifecycle to reduce the carbon footprint of your operations.  Common operational tasks such as inspecting the connectivity state of a device, verifying device credentials are configured correctly, and querying devices based on their current state must be in place before launch so that your system has the required visibility to troubleshoot applications and reduce the need for site visits. From a sustainability point of view, inaccurate information about device status can result in delayed or erroneous actions such as unnecessary truck rolls or mis-directed corrective actions. This can lead to decreased efficiency and increased costs. 

Having an accurate view of the state of all devices is therefore an imperative for operating at scale.  This is best done through the use of tools, services and automation.  Here are some of the key ways to monitor IoT operations using AWS IoT services:

  • Use AWS IoT Device Management services to manage the entire lifecycle of your IoT devices, including firmware updates in the field.  This helps in the remote management of devices, reducing the need for site visits and lowering the carbon footprint of your operations.  For additional observability into your device's resource allocation, you can install the AWS X-Ray daemon to see how edge applications perform and where CPU utilization or other optimizations can be made to decrease power consumption or better allocate device resources. 

  • Monitor resource utilization periodically and set up an alerting system to notify appropriate stakeholders if the utilization goes above a specific threshold.  For simple threshold conditions, detection can be done on the device itself and alerts sent to the cloud.  During the development phase, cloud-based monitoring can be used to determine the appropriate threshold values for your workload.  It is recommended to configure automatic actions such as optimizing resource allocation or disabling processes to avoid system downtime caused by anomalous conditions. Regularly reviewing monitoring data and threshold adjustments will support accurate and timely notifications that reflect the current performance of the IoT device.  

  • AWS IoT Core provides a set of metrics that you can use to monitor the performance and health of your IoT devices and applications. These metrics include device connections, message delivery, and rule engine metrics. You can view these metrics using Amazon CloudWatch or the AWS IoT Core console.  In addition, you can monitor device metrics such as CPU and memory utilization, battery levels and the like using the Fleet Metrics feature of AWS IoT Core. These metrics can be used to proactively identify devices that are degrading or will soon need attention, averting service impact and the need for emergency truck rolls.