First Deployment

This walkthrough matches the current Swarm Hosts launch flow in the UI.

Before You Start

  • You can sign in to the control plane.
  • At least one swarm host is visible in Swarm hosts.
  • The swarm host is sending heartbeats.

If you are just trying the platform, start with Minetest (Luanti) because it has a simple UDP layout and optional upload helpers.

Launch The Server

  1. Sign in and open Launch.
  2. Pick a game from the catalog.
  3. Choose the swarm host that should host it.
  4. Enter a server name.
  5. Set CPU and memory limits.
  6. Fill in any game-specific configuration fields.
  7. If a version selector is shown, pick the managed game version tag you want.
  8. Click Launch.

Notes:

  • the version selector only shows managed versions that Swarm Hosts already knows how to launch
  • you do not paste raw image names into the launch form
  • if a game does not show version choices yet, Swarm Hosts uses the current platform image for that game

For Minetest, you can also:

  • add extra minetest.conf keys from the launch form
  • upload mods.zip
  • upload world.zip

What Swarm Hosts Does For You

After you click Launch, the control plane:

  • validates that you can access the swarm host
  • checks the swarm host still has enough free CPU and RAM, unless Allow over commit is enabled on that swarm host
  • reserves host ports automatically from that swarm host's allowed port range
  • injects assigned port values into game environment variables when the image expects them
  • queues a deployment task for the swarm host agent

You do not manually choose host ports in the current UI.

Watch It Start

Open Deployments and watch the status change.

Typical path:

  • pending_deploy
  • dispatched
  • running

If the deployment fails, open the deployment detail page and use Logs to inspect the error.

Use The Deployment Detail Page

Once the server exists, the deployment detail page gives you:

  • host port mappings
  • swarm host public and private IPs
  • public reachability badge
  • current resource limits
  • start, stop, restart, delete, force delete, and requeue actions
  • links to Logs, Resource monitor, and File manager

Connect Players

Players connect to the swarm host public IP plus the assigned host port:

<SWARM_HOST_PUBLIC_IP>:<HOST_PORT>

Use the game-specific docs to confirm whether the game expects TCP, UDP, or both.

After The First Launch

Common next steps:

  • open Logs to confirm the server finished booting
  • open Resource monitor to watch CPU and RAM
  • open File manager to manage persistent data
  • use Update resource limits if you need more CPU or RAM
  • use the game-specific guide for save paths, config files, and connection notes