FileWave Device Management System
Filewave is a cross-platform/multi-platform Device Management System that helps big organizations to manage their devices from a single interface.
We are able to manage devices of different platforms:
Windows
macOS
iOS
Apple TV
Android
Chromebook
and we're able to:
Get inventory data (CPU, RAM, free disk space, ....)
Install software and updates
Send specific commands (reboot, lock , ....) to devices
FileWave Before NATS
Before we switched to NATS, the internal messaging was implemented using ZeroMQ.
ZeroMQ is a library that offers several mechanisms and patterns to implement a lot of different communication strategies. It works well but has several limitations (for our use case):
It's just a library: so we had to implement a "central" server
A single socket can use just a single pattern; if you need a PUB/SUB and a REQ/REPLY you have to open two sockets
Not supported in web applications; the messaging with the WEB interfaces was implemented by "converting" ZeroMQ messages and sending them to the UI using SSE (Server Sent Event)
It does not support out-of-the-box TLS
It does not support use cases that require persistence
Why we needed to migrate
The main drivers for migrations were:
We have strict requirements for having TLS on all communication channels
We need support for web applications
Message persistence and replay are something we'll need to use soon
Why NATS?
We did some research based on our needs:
Client libraries for (at least) C/C++, Python, Web Browsers
Cloud-ready/friendly
mTLS support
Easy to install/configure and monitor
With good documentation and community
And we found a few candidates:
RabbitMQ
Kafka
NATS
We decided then to do some parallel investigations and, based on our specific use cases - we decided that NATS was the best choice for us.
The main drivers for picking NATS were:
Easy to integrate into our installers (thanks to Go)
By far the simplest to install and configure
Very small install size and memory footprint (thanks to the Go engine)
Pre-built binaries for all platforms we need to support
Wide-range of authentication systems (for instance we use mTLS for devices and server components and JWT for authenticating users on User Interfaces)
