Red Hat Edge Manager uses an autonomous agent on each device to manage the operating system and workloads, ensuring reliable operation even with limited or intermittent connectivity.

Red Hat Edge Manager supports both image mode and package mode operating systems. For image mode, you can include the Red Hat Edge Manager agent and its settings in the image that you distribute to devices. For package mode, you can install the agent directly on a traditional RPM-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux host with dnf install flightctl-agent.

Image mode operating systems let the agent start a transactional update of the image and roll back to the previous version if an update fails. Package mode devices do not support OS image updates or rollback through Red Hat Edge Manager; the agent applies configuration overlays and updates application workloads directly. See Package-mode management capabilities and limitations in the Additional resources section.

Red Hat Edge Manager architecture has the following main features:

• Agent: A lightweight process on the device that polls the service for updates, applies the desired state, and manages local workloads even during network outages.
• Service: The central control plane that manages the device inventory and coordinates fleet-wide settings. To support these tasks, the service includes:
  • API server: Handles authenticated communication between the service, administrative tools, and enrolled devices.
  • HTTPS gateway (standalone Red Hat Enterprise Linux only): An nginx reverse proxy on port 443 that handles TLS and routes traffic to internal services by URL path. The gateway forwards agent API and telemetry ports with mutual TLS (mTLS) passthrough. See HTTPS gateway for standalone Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments in the Additional resources section.
  • Database: The storage layer that holds the current device registry, enrollment data, and the target state for the fleet.
  • Image Builder (optional): Builds operating system images for devices from the control plane. On Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, the Image Builder worker requires privileged access scoped to a dedicated ServiceAccount.
• Image mode operating system: An immutable Linux distribution that uses bootc. This enables transactional, versioned updates that can be safely rolled back if an update fails.
• Package mode operating system: A traditional RPM-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux host managed with dnf or yum. The agent applies configuration overlays and updates application workloads directly, but does not manage OS updates or rollback on these devices.
• Device: A hardware unit or virtual machine that runs the agent. It tracks local state, applies settings, and reports health metrics back to the service.
• Device fleet: A logical grouping of devices managed as a single unit. Fleets let you roll out updates and policies to thousands of devices at once with detailed visibility.