Bulk onboarding with Agent Smith

When a new agent registers with Rewst, the workflow hits Azure IoT Hub’s identity registry up to five times.

Two queries → create → get → tag‑update

On a standard‑1 (S1) hub, that registry is capped at 100 identity operations per minute, per unit.

100 ops ÷ 5 ops / agent ≈ **20 agents / min / unit**

What is an IoT hub unit?

A unit is simply a slice of IoT Hub capacity you can dial up or down. All per‑minute limits scale linearly with both units and SKU size.

SKU
Identity ops / min / unit
Agents / min / unit, 5‑call workflow

S1 / S2

100

~20

S3

5 000

~1 000


Scenarios

Choose one
How to do it
Throughput
Cost example*

Scale the hub (fast)

bash az iot hub update -n <hub> --sku S3 --unit 2 • Run 5 min before deploy; scale back to S1 --unit 1 when done.

~2 000 agents/min

S3 ≈ $3.47 per unit‑hour → 2 units × 4 h ≈ $28

Throttle in RMM (no Azure cost)

• Deploy ≤ 50 agents / min / S1‑unit. • Add jitter: Start‑Sleep (Get‑Random 5 3600) before install.

Current hub limit (~20 agents/min)

Longer total time; more scripting effort

*US‑East pricing, rounded

Rules to follow

  • Default S1 × 1 → ≈ 20 agents / min.

  • Formula: Agents / min = (100 or 5 000) × units ÷ 5.

  • Scaling is live. Existing connections stay up; a few messages may arrive out of order, which is harmless.

Pick the path that matches your timeline and budget to avoid 429s during mass onboarding.

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