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Device Management Operation

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A typical device management operation involves the following steps:

  1. The device polls the server.

    The Device Management engine sends an HTTP POST to the server that contains its identification information.

    For more information about the client database, see Device Management Client Database.

    For more information about polling the server, see Poll Request to the Server.

  2. The server responds to the device poll.

    The server sends back a poll response with information about all packages that the device is supposed to have, including optional packages. The response also contains changes, if any, to client configuration settings.

    For more information, see Server Response to the Device Poll.

  3. The device schedules an instruction request session with the server.

    The device receives and parses the server response. The package list from the server is compared to the internal database of packages, and the device computes all the packages that it needs to have to conform to the list received. It also removes those packages that it already has that do not conform to the list. The device then sends an instruction request for every package that is needed.

    For more information, see Instruction Request to the Server.

    The server sends back a download instruction response for every download instruction request it receives from the device. The download instruction response contains the download instructions for the package.

    For more information, see Instruction Response from the Server.

  4. When the device receives the download instruction response, it schedules a download event. The download event can be triggered immediately or it can wait for specific conditions, such as when the device is docked. The scheduling criteria, including time schedule and bandwidth restrictions, are part of the download instruction response.

    A download event can be recurring or non-recurring. In either case, the download event consists of four phases:

    • The device sends a package location request message to the server to get the current download URL. The server responds with a package location response.
    • The device sends a status report that indicates the beginning of the download event.
    • The device sends a status report that indicates the end of the download event. When the download is successful, it triggers the execution of the post install command. This is the command the device should execute after the package is downloaded.
    • The device sends a status report that indicates the end of execution of the post install command.

    A recurring download event is of two types:

    • Download package on every recurrence.
    • Download package only on first execution and only execute the post install command on recurrence.

    For more information about downloading a package, see Device Download Event.

  5. If requested by the server, the device also sends reports such as software inventory reports, machine inventory reports, and file collection reports to the server. The server controls these reports and the frequency at which they are posted by enabling the necessary report type in the server response to device poll message.

    For more information about sending reports to the server, see Reports to the Server.

At any point in the preceding process, if a network connection is not available when a task or event has to execute, the task is queued by the device management scheduler until the network connection is available. Once the network connection is available, the task will execute at a time that is defined by the task frequency.

See Also

Device Management

 Last updated on Thursday, April 08, 2004

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