Hi everyone! A question came up on exploring open-source Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions for CHT deployments or programs that includes a range of low-spec devices (limited RAM, storage constraints, and occasional performance lag). It would be great to hear from the community about your experiences with different MDMs, specifically:
Which open-source MDM solutions have you used with the CHT?
How well did they handle resource-constrained devices? (e.g., RAM, storage, CPU usage)
What optimizations or workarounds did you implement to improve performance?
Any challenges you faced in deployment or day-to-day management?
If you’ve worked with any MDMs to manage CHT devices or applications, I’d appreciate your insights or recommendations.
@Anro - if you have a spare moment, I’d love to hear about your experience with SureMDM which you’ve mentioned you use. While SureMDM appears to be commercial, I think it would still be great to hear about your experience all the same.
Hi @sila, great questions! Thank you for tagging us in this conversation, @mrjones.
A colleague of ours, who originally suggested SureMDM, manages most of the interactions with their team and oversees the specifics of the configuration we push to our mobile devices. I’ve forwarded the gist of this conversation to him and hope to have some answers to your questions soon. However, he is currently on leave, so we appreciate your patience.
In the meantime, what I can share is that we adopted SureMDM to enhance the safety of our CHWs. While serving their communities, they encountered frequent device thefts, putting them at risk. By making the devices undesirable through MDM, we aimed to reduce theft and, in turn, remove the target from our CHWs’ backs. Despite the cost, this was an obvious choice for us.
SureMDM worked on old devices with 3GB of RAM running old Android versions (8 and 9), but some functionality was not available, or had to be tweaked during set-up to get it to work. E.g. cannot remote into the old devices, and some Android apps are not available in the SureLock interface (ie locked down kiosk view) for certain devices. Core functionality worked - SureLock kiosk, tracking, messaging, pushing jobs, (re)enrolling devices. The new devices with Android 12 but only 2GB of RAM also ran SureMDM without any issues. Unclear whether SureMDM interfered or competed with memory or CPU usage of CHAMP - this is still on the to do list to investigate.
No optimizations were needed, apart from the setup tweaks.
On one device SureMDM failed suddenly - kiosk froze and unable to exit it. After extensive troubleshooting with tech support it was still unclear what the issue was. Eventually the device was factory reset and reenrolled, and then worked correctly again.
Some old devices failed to enroll via Zero Touch Enrollment (ZTE) from the onset. Sometimes it was due to low data connectivity speed - restarting enrollment with a faster or more stable (less devices competing for the same WiFi) internet connection worked for most such enrollment failures. Reenrollment by Axon (company which manages Google’s ZTE) sometimes worked. Occasionally an old device would consistently fail to enroll, and another would be used instead. These devices were 4 to 5 years old. No enrollment challenges were experienced with new devices apart from connectivity limitations (unrelated to the device).
Thank you @Anro for your quick and detailed response. This is super useful; I will take some time to familiarize myself with its features and setup tweaks.
@derick@elijah when you have some time, please share your experience with Headwind MDM, as it is an open-source tool you’ve used for a national deployment. I believe the community will benefit from your learnings and experience. Thank you!
