looking for recommendations
 

Hi there,

Currently, I have a few thousands of orange-pi devices out there acting as data collectors. In fact, SNMP relays. It collect SNMP data from SNMP enabled devices on the same network where those orange-pi devices are connected and send it to a database server that store that data. To visualize this data there is a web app that browse the database and get reports and all sort of analysis. For all purposes, it is a monitoring center.

The data is sent using HTTP POST, so there is no need to open ports on firewall, you get the idea. These orange-pi has no input devices like keyboard and mouse, neither video output, only network. Of course if you plug a keyboard and a monitor you can interact with but it is not necessary for normal operation. Plug'n run. No configuration or intervention needed for normal operation.

Currently, the software that runs on these orange-pi is static. There is no way to update the code. There is no remote access to it.

I want to start the version 2.0, adding the auto-update feature to theses devices.

From time to time it checks a remote repository and verifies if there is a new version of code available, and if there is, download and replace the current one.

I am thinking in encapsulate my software (the snmp data collector) in a container and the container version it is all the orange-pi have to update in case of a new version is available, am I right ?

I am not sure what tools are available to do it without human intervention on orange-pi side.
I was looking at opensuse projects: microOS and Kubic, but they don't run on orange-pi, only on raspberry-pi, which is more expensive than the orange-pi. And we already have thousands of orange-pi devices running....

Any ideas ?
I am a newbie regarding to containers, but I experienced linux traditional server admin.

First off, make sure that you do the update securely to avoid building somebody else a botnet.

You might be able to make a smaller appImage than a container. Does orange-pi have FUSE filesystem?

Whatever method you use, make sure that it includes updating your certificates so that an expired or changed cert doesn't disable your system.