Possibility to force OTA installation

Hello,

 

is there an possibility to force the download and installation of OTA via Soti 2024.1.2.1046.

With force i mean The OTA process on the device start immediately with download and installation and not "12h" later.. 

only Zebra Enterprise devices.

Kind regards

 

Günter

16 days ago
SOTI MobiControl
ANSWERS
RS
Rafael Schäfer
16 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

Afaik not when you use OTA (see last paragraph) but if you grab the image, you can provide a package or file sync rule with the image and script to install the update instantly when the file was downloaded by the device(s).

Guide: https://supportcommunity.zebra.com/s/article/Perform-an-OS-Update-using-StageNow-Tool-or-SOTI-MobiControl?language=en_US

My experiences with Zebra OTA integrated into Soti aren't that nice at it seemed to work as expected but used it when they started and not anymore as we are not using Zebra devices in my responsible area anymore. But maybe @Matt Dermody can tell you more about it as he is quite experienced regarding Zebra devices.

GK
Guenter Kosak
16 days ago

Hello rafael,

 

thank you for your comment. 

The point is that we use Xtreme Hubs for deployment. This mean that when i create the profile the file first sync with the hub. And this is very slow or the start of sync is late and managed by mobicontrol. When the file is on the hub it is fast.

I dont know the way to force the download from the Filesystem to the hub

Günter

 

 

 

RS
Rafael Schäfer
16 days ago

Sadly i don't have experiences with Xtreme Hub yet but is it the same if you use profiles instead (having file + post script in a package)?

MD
Matt Dermody Diamond Contributor
16 days ago

This thread now seems more like an Xtreme Hub issue than a Zebra OTA issue. I have had some success with Xtreme Hub and Zebra LifeGuard updates, although there were some file size issues we faced for a while. There are improvements coming that should make distributing large files through Xtreme Hub better, which makes sense since that's the whole purpose of Xtreme hub in the first place. I suggest you open a case with SOTI support on your Xtreme Hub issues to see how they can assist.

I have had customers on Xtreme hub have 2GB+ OS Update downloads go from 1+ hour to ~10 minutes over the local network. It can be worth it to get implemented and working. 

M
MMMOD
2 days ago

Hi Guenter Kosak,
Thanks for posting on SOTI pulse. Thanks Rafael and Matt for responding to the post, your expertise and willingness to help are greatly appreciated!
Has your query been resolved? If not, or if you have any additional concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out. We are dedicated to providing assistance and support.
Also, if this post has helped you in solving your query, I would request you to mark the particular comment as "is solution", so that others may benefit from this information.

MD
Matt Dermody Diamond Contributor
16 days ago

I would agree that SOTI's implementation of Zebra OTA continues to be insufficient and misses the mark. We need to be able to define a set OS Version we want to enforce for device enrolling into the server and let it automate the management of that. It is currently a mostly manual procedure. A well designed EMM doesn't have an admin sitting in front of it all day taking manual actions. LifeGuard OTA is also wildly complex in its requirements for Google Play based apps with enrollment requirements. It still remains more preferable to just use File Sync rules delivering OS Update ZIPs with Post Sync scripting than using the OTA functionality in my opinion. It really is too bad that it is not actually useful.