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Who this is for

Operators who need an internet-facing layer for RPC, WebSocket, and peer traffic while validators stay private. Sentries absorb noise, apply rate limits, and reduce attack surface on consensus keys.

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Before you start

  • Topology: Sentries sit between the public internet (or a wide user base) and validators. Validators peer with sentries; users and many light clients talk to sentries, not to validator IPs.
  • Capacity: Expect high connection counts and bursty traffic. Plan bandwidth, connection limits, and CPU for TLS and JSON-RPC workloads.
  • Policy: Configure rate limiting, IP allowlists or authentication where supported, and monitoring for abuse.

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Initialize the node

  1. Install the Morpheum CLI.
  2. Run init with role sentry, choosing a data directory on disks suitable for sustained I/O.
  3. Set moniker and chain ID to match the network.
Role defaults usually enable public RPC semantics and higher connection limits than a typical full node—still validate against your version’s generated config.

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Configuration

Pay special attention to:
  • Public listeners — Addresses and ports exposed to clients; put TLS termination in front if your deployment uses a reverse proxy or load balancer.
  • Peering — Connections toward validators (private) and toward the wider network as required by your network’s topology docs.
  • Rate limits — Essential for production public endpoints.

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Run the node

Start with run (non-validator). Place behind load balancers or anycast if you operate multiple sentries for availability. Monitor error rates, latency, and connection churn. Alert on upstream validator health so you can shift traffic before user impact.

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Security

  • Sentries are public; do not store validator private keys on them.
  • Keep validators on separate hosts with strict firewall rules: only sentries and approved ops paths.
  • Patch and restart on a predictable cadence; public edges are common targets.