SSD Nodes: Run Real Game Infrastructure on an External Drive — One Click, No Command Line
Until now, ENLIGHTENMENT ran entirely on our servers. Every map tile, every 3D asset, every game action travelled from our VPS fleet to your browser — no matter how powerful your own PC was.
SSD Nodes change that. If you have an external SSD or NVMe drive and a reasonably modern PC, you can now run a fully managed ENLIGHTENMENT node — our own operating system, our game server, a blockchain full node — without installing any software from us. No terminal, no dd, no Linux knowledge, no .exe required.
What is an SSD Node?
An SSD Node is a small dedicated drive that turns your PC into real game infrastructure:
- A complete, immutable operating system — ours, not yours. It boots like a game console and lands directly in a fullscreen browser pointed at ENLIGHTENMENT.
- A real game server — the same code our VPS run, serving you and (in later phases) nearby players.
- A blockchain full node — your own verified copy of the KC/CC ledger.
- Encrypted end to end — on machines with a TPM 2.0 chip the disk seals itself to your hardware at first boot. Pull it out, and it’s ciphertext. Your keys never touch your Windows installation.
The difference to the software agents we announced earlier: an agent is untrusted — it can only forward encrypted traffic and serve integrity-checked files. An SSD Node runs our operating system on your hardware, so it can be trusted with real work.
Why it matters
| Software Agent | SSD Node | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Your existing Windows/Linux | Our own OS on a dedicated drive |
| Trust level | Untrusted edge (relay + CDN only) | Managed node (game server, blockchain) |
| Your OS can interfere | Yes | No — boots separately, disk encrypted |
| Setup | Installer | Bootable ISO + pairing code |
When SSD Nodes go live for hosting, your game traffic can be served from a node a few streets away instead of a datacenter on another continent — lower latency for you, less load on our servers, and a network that gets stronger the more players join.
How it works — the whole flow
- Apply first. Anyone can run the built-in network test to check their bandwidth and connection — but operating an SSD node requires approval. Click Settings → SSD Node → Prepare SSD Node to file your application. A golden ambassador then verifies you in a short video call (the same call flow used for level-up verifications). Once approved, the download button and pairing codes unlock for your account.
- After approval, open Settings → SSD Node again. You’ll see a short pairing code like
us:KF7-X9Q— valid for 15 minutes — and a download button for the installer ISO. - Write the ISO to your external SSD or NVMe drive with a standard flashing tool — balenaEtcher (Windows, macOS, Linux) or Rufus in dd mode. These are signed, well-known third-party tools — we don’t ship any installer software of our own, so there’s nothing to install and nothing for an antivirus to flag.
- Plug the drive into the PC that should become the node, connect a LAN cable, and boot from it (F12/F8/Esc boot menu). The installer asks for your pairing code on screen — type it in and lean back.
Everything else is automatic: the installer runs entirely in RAM, downloads the node image from your nearest regional server, verifies it byte-for-byte against a signed checksum, writes it over the very disk you booted from (that’s intentional — the OS lives in memory, so the boot drive is free to be overwritten), personalizes it for your account, and reboots into the finished node. The ISO itself is generic — identical for every node — and can be reused for your next one.
- First boot takes 10–20 minutes while the system enrolls itself, receives its encrypted network identity, syncs the blockchain, and starts serving. Progress is on screen — no input needed.
Under the hood: the node joins our private overlay network in its own dedicated segment (10.0.30.x, ssd-node group) with certificates valid for ~30 days — renewed automatically, no maintenance on your side.
Requirements
- A PC with 4+ CPU cores, 8+ GB RAM, and a TPM 2.0 chip (standard on Windows 11 machines)
- An external SSD or NVMe drive, 120 GB+ — the drive will be completely erased
- A wired LAN connection on the node PC — the installer needs DHCP, Wi-Fi is not supported
- An approved SSD-node application — a golden ambassador verifies you in a video call first (apply in Settings → SSD Node)
- The ability to pick a boot device at startup (F12/F8/Esc on most machines)
- Any computer to flash the ISO — balenaEtcher runs on Windows, macOS and Linux; Rufus (dd mode) on Windows
If your PC doesn’t qualify, nothing changes — you keep playing exactly as today.
Honest caveats
- This is early infrastructure. The current image (
ssdnode-v0.10) boots, enrolls, and syncs — real game hosting for nearby players is the next milestone. - Booting from the SSD means you’re in our OS, not Windows — your PC becomes a console while it runs. Dual-boot is the intended mode: play in Windows, host on the SSD, or do both by switching at boot.
- The installer needs a cable: Wi-Fi is not available in the installer environment. And it overwrites the disk it booted from — that’s by design, but means the drive must stay plugged in through the whole install.
- A compromised SSD node can never reach the database — credentials simply don’t exist on the disk. But as with any hardware you plug in: only image drives you intend to dedicate.
What’s next
- Local game sessions served directly by your node (read/write split is already in development)
- Node operators hosting ~30 nearby players — the original multiplier vision, now with a trusted OS underneath
- Real autonomy: nodes that keep your world running even if a region’s servers go dark
The network you build is the network you play on. Grab an external SSD and claim a corner of it.
Technical readers: the installer is a generic Fedora CoreOS live ISO (identical for every node, zero secrets) that streams the node image — an immutable bootc/Fedora system delivered as a signed OCI artifact through our fleet registry — over the boot disk while running from RAM, then personalizes the ESP with a one-time enrollment token redeemed from the pairing code (no passwords on the disk). LUKS sealing to TPM 2.0 happens at first boot. Certificates are Nebula V2, signed by a delegated CA scoped to ssd-node — the same tiered model we use for our own fleet.