Cheapest way to run a full node ?

[cozk]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

[allgoodthings1]

You can normally run only one instance on your network. So fire up the node on the computer you already have running all the time, and forget about all the other equipment you have lying around.

[OrientA]

We can use the home computer and launch the bitcoin wallet when we turn on the computer. That is a kind of full node, although it is off some time.

[SirChiko]

We can use the home computer and launch the bitcoin wallet when we turn on the computer. That is a kind of full node, although it is off some time.

I don't know what you're trying to say, but answer to op: if you want to rent/pay for it then price shouldn't be above 20$/year.

[Buffer Overflow]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

[tonygal]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

Would it be possible using a bananapi or cubietruck or something similar? Can you say something
about the "realistic" minimal requirements? I'd also interested in how much traffic this would cause
per month.

[cozk]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

Would it be possible using a bananapi or cubietruck or something similar? Can you say something
about the "realistic" minimal requirements? I'd also interested in how much traffic this would cause
per month.

3-5gb upload per day i heard.

[tl121]

Not the cheapest, but has been running well since it was installed 6 weeks ago.

$300:
Intel Atom E3815.1 1.46GHz Fanless NUC Barebone Kit
Crucial 8 GB Single DDR3 1600 Mt/s
Intel 520 SSD 120 GB
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS x86_64

[Buffer Overflow]

Can you say something
about the "realistic" minimal requirements? I'd also interested in how much traffic this would cause
per month.

My full node is currently using 660MB of ram, connected to 54 peers.

Not sure how much bandwidth I use each month. I have an unlimited home broadband package, so I don't worry about it.

[shorena]

-snip-
Would it be possible using a bananapi or cubietruck or something similar? Can you say something
about the "realistic" minimal requirements? I'd also interested in how much traffic this would cause
per month.

Traffic depends on the number of connections obviously. I limited them to 50 a while back.

the last days:



the bussiest days yet:

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

With some configuration, it is possible to reduce the memory footprint to as low as 200 or lower megabytes.

[tonygal]

Thanks for your answers. So I'm lead to the conclusion the cheapest option (without much tweaking)
would be to rent out a virtual server. They can be had for a couple of $'s and should
be sufficient ram-wise and traffic-wise (usually at least 50-100 GB/month is included in these
contracts). Did someone try that?

[shorena]

Thanks for your answers. So I'm lead to the conclusion the cheapest option (without much tweaking)
would be to rent out a virtual server. They can be had for a couple of $'s and should
be sufficient ram-wise and traffic-wise (usually at least 50-100 GB/month is included in these
contracts). Did someone try that?

Mine [1] is a VServer (single core, 2 GB Ram, 50(?)GB SSD) and its fine as a node. Its a bit slow from time to time for the analysis of the mempool I want to run, but Im working on another baremetal server at home for that.


[1] http://213.165.91.169/

[Buffer Overflow]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

With some configuration, it is possible to reduce the memory footprint to as low as 200 or lower megabytes.

Can you show me how to do this? I would prefer to use a Pi instead of an x86_64 motherboard setup.

[Buffer Overflow]

Thanks for your answers. So I'm lead to the conclusion the cheapest option (without much tweaking)
would be to rent out a virtual server. They can be had for a couple of $'s and should
be sufficient ram-wise and traffic-wise (usually at least 50-100 GB/month is included in these
contracts). Did someone try that?

Mine [1] is a VServer (single core, 2 GB Ram, 50(?)GB SSD) and its fine as a node. Its a bit slow from time to time for the analysis of the mempool I want to run, but Im working on another baremetal server at home for that.


[1] http://213.165.91.169/

What program did you use to get those stats?

[ranochigo]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

You can use swap and also take steps to reduce memory usage but you would need to have a hard disk/SSD connected to the pi. AFAIK, SD cards aren't designed to have a heavy read and write cycles and can be relatively slow.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

What is the cheapest way to run a full node. I do have a few external HDDs and rasp pi laying around.
No unused laptops though.

Suggestions ? ideas ?

You'll have difficulty running a full node on a pi. It doesn't have enough ram and will end up using swap.

With some configuration, it is possible to reduce the memory footprint to as low as 200 or lower megabytes.

Can you show me how to do this? I would prefer to use a Pi instead of an x86_64 motherboard setup.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=765934.msg8632982#msg8632982

However, setting -listen to 0 means you will not be relaying transactions to other nodes, and that is the most important part of being a full node. You will still be receiving transactions, just not relaying them to other peers.

[Lincoln6Echo]

How about an Banana Pi as full node? It costs nearly the same as RPI but has 1GB of Ram (which should be sufficient,right) and a SATA Port.
In March I will try to get a full node running on Banana Pi with 10Mbit upload. Will there be a significant benefit for using an old SSD for Blockchain storage instead of oldschool HDD? Maybe I/O performance?

Another cool Project: Bitcoin full node using Intel Edison!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=809090.msg9064556#new

[tonygal]

Thanks for your answers. So I'm lead to the conclusion the cheapest option (without much tweaking)
would be to rent out a virtual server. They can be had for a couple of $'s and should
be sufficient ram-wise and traffic-wise (usually at least 50-100 GB/month is included in these
contracts). Did someone try that?

Mine [1] is a VServer (single core, 2 GB Ram, 50(?)GB SSD) and its fine as a node. Its a bit slow from time to time for the analysis of the mempool I want to run, but Im working on another baremetal server at home for that.


[1] http://213.165.91.169/

That looks really nice. Is there a step-by-step guide how to set up a full node available somewhere?

[Reynaldo]

http://blog.pryds.eu/2014/06/compile-bitcoin-core-on-raspberry-pi.html

instead of the sdcard, get one external hdd and use it full time /home/ and move all the partitions to external hdd, use just a 4 gb sd for the other partitions.

Get an usb hub or use latest raspberry pi b+ with the 4 usb hubs, should do well, im planning my self to set one up in later january