Two new ways to run SideServices are now in alpha — as appliances. Instead of installing the sidehub binary yourself, you flash a small, self-updating image and plug it in. The whole mesh comes up on its own.

The Federation appliance

The Federation appliance is the easiest way to self-host an entire SideServices federation. Flash a Raspberry Pi, plug it in, and the controller, relay and your services come up as a single tiny image — no Linux to install, harden or patch.

It’s built on the excellent gokrazy appliance framework, which buys us two things that matter:

  • Atomic over-the-air updates. A password-authenticated, checksum-verified update lands on a second system partition, and the box switches to it in one step — with automatic A/B rollback if it ever fails to boot.
  • An extra-small trusted computing base. No shell, no package manager, a read-only image — there is very little on the device to attack.

It fits wherever a federation just needs to exist — a small or mid-size company, an incident-response kit you carry to a site, a temporary or pop-up deployment, or a lab. Point it at your services — a database, an internal web app, a NAS, an SSH port — and every one becomes reachable from an authorized laptop or phone on localhost, from anywhere, with nothing exposed to the public internet.

The IoT appliance

The IoT appliance puts SideServices in front of an industrial machine or an IoT device. It exposes only the specific services you choose — and by default, no web traffic reaches the device at all. The device stays dark to the internet; only the exact port you grant, to the exact peer you grant it to, is reachable.

Two things make it a fit for the field:

  • Security. The same atomic, password-authenticated over-the-air updates and minimal trusted computing base as the Federation appliance. A fleet stays secure and up to date, with no technician on site.
  • Ease of use. Enrollment is token-based — as simple as plugging in a USB stick.

Try it

Both appliances are in alpha. If you want to self-host a federation, or protect a device in the field, write to us and tell us your use case. More at sideservices.io.