How to limit the maximum number of devices that can connect an Azure IoT Central application ?

Question

Hello,

I'm working on a economic model where we sell for a monthly price a solution based on Azure IoT Central. We would like to adjust the cost for each client depending on the number of devices he wants to manage through the application.
The problem I'm facing is that I can't find a proper way to limit the number of devices for each Azure IoT Central app. I've found ways to monitor it through Azure portal's metrics of the application but limiting the number of devices for an application would be the proper way for us.

Is there a way to do this ?

Thanks in advance,
Aloïs KYROU

Answer 1

Hello @Innes Screen Manager ,

each device you register has its own unique credentials.

You can manage the access of each device individually by blocking or unblocking the devices:

You need to automate this using eg. the Rest API. I expect that the enable/disable property is used for unblock/block.

This way, you have a viable solution to limit the number of devices.

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Answer 2

Hello @Innes Screen Manager ,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum! As Sander pointed, we cannot limit the device creation in Azure IoT Central. You can deactivate each device by setting the status to Block as indicated above.

Another alternative approach for this is to create an Organinzational group in your IoT Central App and assign Org Viewer role to the client users. They would still be able to view the data and organizational dashboards but cannot create new devices. Only Org Administrator and Org Operator would have privileges to create devices. You would have control over the devices getting created on the IoT Central Application. Refer the below details for more information on the above-mentioned User roles.

If this is a viable option for you, here are the resources that will help you set up and Mange Organizations and User Roles. Also, here are the Limitations on Users, Roles and Organizations in IoT Central

Please let us know if you need any further clarification or assistance on this issue.

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Answer 3

Thanks both of you for the answers.

Initially we wanted to give admin role to the IT admin of the customer's company, and remove ourselves from our admin role so the customer feels like we no longer have any control on the app other than verifying he uses it properly.

Both of your answers are ok but it doesn't really work in my case unfortunately. I guess I'll have to think about keeping an admin user on the application and give them only Operator role then.

Thanks for the help,
Best regards,
Aloïs KYROU