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A Nomad client node runs one Expanse daemon that watches allocations through the local Nomad HTTP API and reports task lifecycle telemetry. Jobs are untouched. The console’s Add compute panel and expanse compute register show the short-lived install token plus your deployment’s control-plane and data-plane URLs, which this guide’s installer takes. The token is prompted for during install; it never goes on a command line.

Prefer to delegate? Copy this into an AI assistant with shell access on the Nomad client node; it fetches this guide itself, so it always follows the current steps.

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Prerequisites

  • A Nomad client node with systemd, curl, tar, and sha256sum or shasum, plus sudo.
  • The daemon talks to the local Nomad agent; the installer defaults EXPANSE_NOMAD_ADDR to http://127.0.0.1:4646. Override it (and set EXPANSE_NOMAD_TOKEN for ACL-enabled clusters) before install if needed.

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1. Register the compute

In the console, open Compute → Add compute, pick Nomad, and generate an install token.

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2. Run the installer on the client node

On the client node, using the control-plane and data-plane URLs from the Add compute panel:
Air-gapped deployment? Run the same script from your release bundle mirror host instead of releases.expanse.sh. The installer downloads and verifies the daemon binary, exchanges the token for the compute’s long-lived credential, writes /etc/expanse/config.json, installs the expanse-daemon systemd unit, starts it, and waits for the first heartbeat (default 60 seconds; set EXPANSE_HEARTBEAT_TIMEOUT_SECONDS to adjust).

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3. Verify

The compute appears active in the console within one heartbeat interval. Allocation telemetry follows as the daemon observes running allocations. For what gets captured, see Nomad integration.