What are the features of Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform-IoT Platform (Deprecated)(IoT)-阿里云帮助中心

Instance management

IoT Platform offers public instances and Enterprise instances for device ingestion and business management. For more information, see Overview of instances.

Feature

Description

Public instance

After you activate IoT Platform, a trial public instance is provided by default. Public instances run in the Alibaba Cloud classic network.

Enterprise instance

Purchased instances are Enterprise instances. They run in an Alibaba Cloud VPC. An Alibaba Cloud account can purchase multiple Enterprise instances.

For more information about instance types, see Differences between types of Enterprise instances.

IoT Platform provides staging and production environments for instance management. This helps you separate devices that connect to IoT Platform across different environments. For more information, see Set instance environments.

The following sections describe the features of IoT Platform. For a comparison of features available in each instance type, see Differences between public and Enterprise instances.

Device ingestion

IoT Platform supports large-scale device connections to the cloud and ensures stable, reliable bidirectional communication between devices and the platform.

Feature	Description
Download device-side SDKs	Provides open source device-side code for multiple platforms and cross-platform porting guidance. This helps enterprises connect devices on various platforms. It also provides device-side software development kits (SDKs), drivers, and other tools to help different devices and gateways easily connect to Alibaba Cloud.
Device security authentication	Provides a chip-level secure storage solution (ID²) and a device secret management mechanism to prevent device secrets from being compromised. Offers a very high level of security. Provides X.509 certificate-based device authentication. Supports cloud gateway devices that use X.509 certificates for authentication. Offers a very high level of security. Provides device-specific certificate authentication to reduce the risk of device compromise. Suitable when you can pre-assign device certificates (ProductKey, DeviceName, and DeviceSecret) in batches and burn them onto each device chip. Offers a high level of security. Provides product-specific certificate authentication. Devices are pre-burned with product certificates (ProductKey and ProductSecret) and dynamically obtain device certificates (ProductKey, DeviceName, and DeviceSecret) during authentication. Suitable for mass production scenarios where device certificates cannot be burned onto each device. Offers a standard level of security.
Message communication topics	Provides product and device topics for communication. This simplifies communication management between devices and the server and streamlines authorization operations.
Use MQTT, CoAP, and HTTPS protocols	Provides device-side SDKs for multiple protocols. These SDKs support both the real-time requirements of persistent connections and the low-power needs of short-lived connections.
Cloud-to-cloud connection	Provides a cloud-to-cloud connection SDK to quickly build bridging services. This establishes a bidirectional data channel between devices and Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform.
Cloud Gateway	Quickly connect devices that use China Telecom NB-IoT, open source MQTT, JT/T 808, GB/T 32960, and SL 651 protocols.

Message communication

IoT Platform lets you configure rules for message synchronization, transformation, filtering, and storage to manage communication between devices, servers, and the platform.

Feature	Description
Server-side subscription	Subscribe to one or more types of messages from all devices under a product. Your server-side can receive the subscribed messages through an AMQP client or a Simple Message Queue (formerly MNS) client.
Data Forwarding	IoT Platform forwards specified fields from messages in a specific topic to a destination for storage and processing, based on the data forwarding rules you configure. For a comparison of data forwarding solutions, see Comparison of data forwarding solutions. For information about data forwarding destinations, see: Forward data using SQL statements. Forward data using parser scripts.
Scene orchestration	Configure simple rules to forward device data to other devices, enabling device-to-device interaction.
RRPC communication	Provides two communication modes, revert-RPC (RRPC) and Pub/Sub, to meet your needs in different scenarios. Pub/Sub is a message routing model based on topics.
Broadcast communication
Data compression	Compresses data transmitted between devices and IoT Platform to save device traffic and increase transmission speed.

Device management

Feature	Description
Thing Specification Language model	Provides a device Thing Specification Language (TSL) model to simplify application development.
IoT Twin Engine	Formerly known as the "digital twin" feature, this has been upgraded to the IoT Twin Engine value-added service. It is a platform service for building digital twin solutions based on real-time IoT data for management scenarios such as energy, large buildings, and manufacturing. For more information, see IoT Twin Engine value-added service.
Message parsing	Supports transmitting device messages to your server in binary pass-through mode. Device data is not saved, which ensures data security and control.
Tags	Classify and manage devices across different products.
Device groups	Classify and manage devices across different products.
Advanced search	Use SQL-like statements to quickly search for devices that meet specified conditions.
Device emulator	Simulate a real device to establish a connection with IoT Platform. Use simulated data to test communication and locate issues.
Device shadow	Provides a device shadow caching mechanism that decouples devices from applications and addresses unreliable communication over unstable wireless networks.
File management	Upload files to Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform for storage. You can also download and delete files in the IoT Platform console.
Configure file uploads	Lets you upload device files to your OSS bucket.
NTP service	Allows resource-constrained embedded devices to obtain server-side time in real time.
Gateways and sub-devices	Manage sub-devices, the topological relationships between sub-devices and gateways, and perform monitoring and O&M for sub-devices.
Device distribution	Distribute devices across regions, instances, and accounts to reduce device ingestion costs.

DataService Studio

Feature	Description
Data ingestion	Configure data ingestion to prepare device data for further analysis and use. Data can be ingested from device data sources, cloud product data sources, API data sources, locally uploaded data sources, and IoT Twin Engine data sources.
Data parsing	Use function nodes to pre-process data from IoT instance topics and API data sources.
Data storage	Store hot and cold data from devices for further use and analysis. Hot data storage: Includes TSL model data (properties, services, and events) reported by devices and custom topic data configured through hot data storage rules. Cold data storage: Includes platform system tables, time series/snapshot tables, and custom storage tables.
Data Metric	Manage preset and custom data metrics. Use these metrics for visual analytics to discover value, optimize configurations, and improve business efficiency.
Analysis and insights	Provides SQL-based analysis capabilities. You can analyze device cold data or perform association analysis on imported industry and business data. You can also write SQL statements, configure query execution policies, and schedule output to custom storage tables for further data mining.
Data reports	Provides dataset, workbook, and report capabilities to help you analyze and process data.
Data APIs	Call preset metric APIs, product data APIs, or custom service APIs to retrieve data. This enables system-level integration between your server and IoT Platform.
Data intelligence	Provides algorithm templates and instances to help you interpret device data, monitor device operating status, and track device conditions in real time.
Offline data integration (DataWorks + MaxCompute)	You can integrate data from platform system tables, product property time series tables, product event tables, and custom storage tables in DataService Studio into DataWorks to build a data warehouse and improve data application efficiency.
Real-time data integration (Realtime Compute for Apache Flink)	You can integrate data from product property time series tables and product event tables in DataService Studio into Realtime Compute for Apache Flink to perform real-time analysis on device operating status and detect faults in real time.

Device assignment

Feature	Description
Authorize a device	Grant permissions on a device to another Alibaba Cloud account. After authorization, the authorized account has permission to view and perform some operations on the device. The account also has permission to view and use the product to which the device belongs.
Authorize a product	Grant permissions on a product to the public pool. After authorization, all users of Alibaba Cloud IoT Platform can view the product in the public pool.

Monitoring and O&M

Feature	Description
Real-time monitoring	Perform real-time monitoring and set Cloud Monitor alerts for metrics related to devices, messages, TSL models, and the rules engine.
O&M statistics	Provides device statistics, operating condition statistics, and event statistics to help you quickly understand and analyze all your devices from multiple perspectives.
Device diagnostics	Provides intelligent O&M services based on device operational data. These services help you analyze and diagnose device faults, detect potential risks, and predict business anomalies.
View O&M dashboard	Displays a regional heatmap of your devices to help you quickly understand the status of all your devices.
Online debugging	Send instructions from the IoT Platform console to a device to debug device-side features.
Remote logon	Use the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol network service to remotely log on to devices for control and management.
Log service	Displays IoT Platform logs and on-premises device logs to help you locate issues and perform fault analysis.
OTA update	Enables over-the-air (OTA) update capabilities for devices.
Device tasks	Simultaneously initiate property settings, asynchronous service invocations, custom topic messages, and custom tasks for multiple devices.
Remote Configuration	Remotely update device configuration online, such as system parameters and network parameters.
Alert Center	Process alert information triggered by scene orchestration rules in the rules engine.
Secure tunnels	Establish a WebSocket channel between the access end and the device end to remotely connect to IoT Platform devices on an enterprise's internal network.
Event response	Configure scene definitions and actions to send notifications about device status changes and reported property data.

Security Center

Use the View threat list and Notification settings features to continuously detect device security threats and receive threat notifications.

Server-side development guide

IoT Platform provides Server-side SDKs for Java, Python, PHP, .NET, and Go, along with Cloud APIs. These tools help developers access server-side capabilities such as product management, device management, topic management, data forwarding, and message communication.

Note

The regions and instance types supported by each IoT Platform API are the same as those supported by the corresponding feature in the IoT Platform console.

Value-added services

IoT Platform provides value-added services that you must purchase and activate before use. For more information, see Activate value-added services.