Sodium Update! New Dashboard!
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Just installed. I want to see what it can do.
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@dengelhardt said in Sodium Update! New Dashboard!:
Just installed. I want to see what it can do.
Well right now, it is very much a tech preview, but we are excited about how it is going. Our focus at the moment is getting solid data collection that really lets you see your assets and keep track of them. One step at a time, we have a lot of work to do. But things are coming along and changes are happening daily!
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How about some back ground on this project?
What are it's goals?
How is it monetized?
What protections exist so the hoster can't issue commands to our devices? -
@dashrender said in Sodium Update! New Dashboard!:
What protections exist so the hoster can't issue commands to our devices?
I don't know enough about how salt works to answer this, but I would assume there are none.
But this is no different than pretty much any other RMM product. By the nature of where it resides, this can be done. I can do the same from ScreenConnet access sessions, or from the Atera web page with simple powershell command that executes with admin rights.
If this is only supposed to be a monitor and report solution, then the use of slat like this is easy for deploy but super scary from a security point of view.
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@JaredBusch is correct, Salt under the hood would be over the top power if the goal was a passive reporting and monitoring tool. But that is not the end game here, the monitoring is just the beginning as we move towards a comprehensive management solution. We are doing monitoring first because it is easier and a broad stroke. We want the technology in use and proven before we go after harder stuff and we want it useful and being used as quickly as possible. So monitoring comes first. Plus it's hard to manage something you can't monitor. Right now we are working on getting deployments and support and all of that working as smoothly as possible. We are anxious to get to the big stuff, though. So many features on our roadmap that really have us excited about where we are going with this. But certainly the end goal is an incredibly powerful management platform that does a lot more than what you are seeing at this point.
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@dashrender the immediately goal is to create revenue through ad placements over in some of that blank space on the right. We want to keep the ads reasonable and out of the way, but enough to make the system pay for itself. Will there be other monetization in the future? Probably, but we want to keep the system as free as possible. Some features that people are likely to want, like log collection and retention, are not reasonable to do for free simply based on storage needs alone. We could never get enough ads to offset that cost. So that is something that might be a different system where you'd have to pay to get that feature. Similar to if we were handling backup storage. Which is another thing that has been tossed around and would obviously be a pay-for premium offering. And we except some future need for either dedicated server or on location services that would require support and that would be monetized directly, rather than ads (or possible a blend, I have no idea.) So there is plenty of thought around monetization, but right now our focus is getting the product working and people wanting to deploy it. A product that is used is easy to monetize. One that is not, there is no point trying to monetize. So one thing at a time. Once people are using it, getting ad revenue is not expected to be an issue.
Part of our design philosophy with Sodium has been to build in very smart and efficient ways. We are trying hard to keep costs low so that the ability to monetize is much easier. That way we don't need a complex or intrusive advertising platform to pay the bills and keep development moving forward.
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Is this going to be open source?
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@dashrender Sodium itself is a service, not software, so it is neither open nor closed as that doesn't really apply to the Sodium service itself. Will we be opening the platform for other providers to manage down the road? I can't answer that. But at the moment, there are no stated plans to provide any software products, on a service. So no code of any sort going out.
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@jaredbusch said in Sodium Update! New Dashboard!:
@dashrender said in Sodium Update! New Dashboard!:
What protections exist so the hoster can't issue commands to our devices?
I don't know enough about how salt works to answer this, but I would assume there are none.
But this is no different than pretty much any other RMM product. By the nature of where it resides, this can be done. I can do the same from ScreenConnet access sessions, or from the Atera web page with simple powershell command that executes with admin rights.
If this is only supposed to be a monitor and report solution, then the use of slat like this is easy for deploy but super scary from a security point of view.
Right - so before I can deploy this anymore - I'm going to need to see the policies that the company is governed by that says that they won't do any funny business.
Medical practice and all. In fact, I have to remove this from my one work PC now. Home testing is still OK though.
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And the evening of deployments begins.....
Hopefully we will see some new stuff tonight. Fingers crossed.
