
194 CHAPTER NINE
updates to groups of devices rather than requiring a tedious series of clicks on a user
interface for each individual device.
Health monitoring
Devices should be able to report error conditions or changes in status to the middle-
ware. The middleware should provide some way for an operator to view the current
status of all devices in “dashboard” summary. It should also have the capability to drill
down in order to view the detailed histories and current statuses of individual devices
when analyzing problems.
Notification
Almost any management tool provides visual, audible, email, pager, interactive voice,
and other sorts of notification to an operator in the event of an error, but for edge
devices, the management tool must not only be able to notify operators of problems,
but also to determine which operator to notify based on the location and type of the
problem. The group management feature mentioned previously can help greatly in
managing alarm groups.
Failover and recovery
Middleware should be able to coordinate failover and recovery, taking into account
some predetermined failure strategies, and it should also be able to make some limited
decisions concerning self-healing. As an example, if one of two readers at a portal fails,
the middleware should be able to reconfigure the remaining reader to cover the entire
door as completely as possible until a replacement arrives.
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