IronFlock Appliance
The IronFlock Appliance is a pre-configured, self-contained box that ships with the complete IronFlock system ready to use. It is placed on-site next to the machines it manages — no DMZ, no VPC, no Kubernetes cluster required.
Think of it as IronFlock in a box.
Who It’s For
The Appliance fits two main audiences:
- Machine manufacturers and OEMs who want to deliver digital services together with their machines. Instead of asking the end customer to open their DMZ or provision cloud infrastructure, the manufacturer ships the IronFlock Appliance including their digital service as part of the machine delivery. The customer plugs it into the local network, and it works.
- Small factories with a lean IT team who want a local, turnkey IoT platform without running a full Kubernetes stack. The Appliance arrives pre-configured, installs in minutes, and keeps all data on-site — giving small operations the same dashboards, app management, and device control as a full cloud deployment, with none of the infrastructure overhead.
How It Differs from a Private Cloud Deployment
Both the Appliance and the Private Cloud deployment run IronFlock locally. The key difference is scope and complexity:
- Private Cloud is a full IT installation — it runs in the customer’s DMZ or VPC, managed by the customer’s IT team, and can serve many accounts and projects across the organization.
- Appliance is a compact, turnkey box — it arrives pre-configured, sits on the local network next to the machines, and requires no IT involvement from the customer. It is designed for a limited number of machines.
In This Section
- Installation: requirements, time synchronization and the install command.
- HTTPS & Certificates: the three modes — plain HTTP, a self-issued CA, or your corporate certificate.
- Network & Firewall: outbound connections, ports for connected devices, firewall identities and remote access from ironflock.com.
- Edge Devices: attaching devices, and agent, IronFlockOS and firmware updates.
- Operation: signing in, user accounts, app sync, email, updates and the license lifecycle.
- Security: what each mode protects, a hardening checklist, secrets on the host, backup and decommissioning.
- Behind a Corporate Proxy: installing and running the appliance through an HTTP proxy.
What’s in the Box
The Appliance ships with all IronFlock services pre-installed and pre-configured:
- IronFlock UI accessible from the local network
- Local App Store for offline app distribution
- Board Studio, Alarms and Data Store
- AI Multi Agent system (works only when connected to the internet)
Edge Device and Server in One
The Appliance does not only run the IronFlock platform — it can simultaneously act as an edge device in the IronFlock context. This means it can run containerized apps just like any other managed device, while also serving as the central management node for other devices on the same network. This makes it a compact, complete solution: platform server and edge compute in a single box.
Because the Appliance runs the same IronFlock device agent as any managed edge device, it also benefits from the agent’s Connectivity & Resilience protections — indefinite automatic network reconnection, the Storage Emergency state that keeps the box reachable and recovers automatically when its disk fills, out-of-memory protection, and a self-restarting agent. This is a key reason the Appliance — and your remote access to it — stays online through local network, disk, and memory problems.
Architecture
Hardware
The Appliance hardware is negotiable and is typically provided by the OEM or machine manufacturer. IronFlock provides the software stack and pre-configures the system on the chosen hardware before shipment. For production, plan an industrial PC with 4 cores, 16 GB RAM and an NVMe SSD. The installation requirements give the sizes for tests and pilots and explain what drives the load. Contact the IronFlock team to discuss hardware requirements for your use case.
Limitations
- Single master account for AppStudio — The Appliance can host an AppStudio environment for one master account only. App development is scoped to a single organization.
- Limited scale — The Appliance is sized for a bounded set of machines in one location. Fleets that span multiple sites or tens of thousands of devices are better served by the cloud or a private cloud deployment.
- AI services require outbound LLM access — See Private Cloud for options when the Appliance has no internet access at all.
Contact Us
Appliance deployments are configured in partnership with the IronFlock team. Contact us to discuss your hardware, machine count, and branding requirements.