The Requirements

Virtual Private Server

This is probably the best and most common option for running a full node.

There are many companies offering a VPS for good prices. Make sure not to take a VPS platform which is based on Virtuozzo or OpenVZ. Performance is not best and I personally don’t like the fact the hosting company can see what processes I am running on my private server.

Also, a good advice is not to take a contract for a year, but try to find hosting services with pay-per-hour or monthly contract. Some hostings such as SSDNodes are not recommended: some fullnode operators claimed their contracts have been cancelled due to running “crypto” software (IRI).

The basic recommendation is to have one with at least 4GB RAM, 2 cores and minimum 60GB harddrive (SSD preferably).

Operating System

When you purchase a VPS you are often given the option which operating system (Linux of course) and which distribution to install on it.

This tutorial/installer was tested on:

Note

This installation does not support operating systems with pre-installed panels such as cpanel, whcms, plesk etc. If you can, choose a “bare” system.

Warning

Some VPS providers provide a custom OS installation (Ubuntu or CentOS) with additional software installed (LAMP, cpanel etc). These images will not work nicely with the installer. In some cases, VPS providers modify images and might deliver operating systems that will be incompatible with this installer.

Accessing the VPS

Once you have your VPS deployed, most hosting provide a terminal (either GUI application or web-based terminal). With the terminal you can login to your VPS’s command line. You probably received a password with which you can login to the server. This can be a ‘root’ password, or a ‘privileged’ user (with which you can access ‘root ‘ privileges).

The best way to access the server is via a Secure Shell (SSH). If your desktop is Mac or Linux, this is native on the command line. If you use Windows, I recommend installing Putty

There are plenty of tutorials on the web explaining how to use SSH (or SSH via Putty). Basically, you can use a password login or SSH keys (better).

System User

Given you are the owner of the server, you should either have direct access to the ‘root’ account or to a user which is privileged. It is often recommended to run all commands as the privileges user, prefixing the commands with ‘sudo’. In this tutorial I will leave it to the user to decide.

If you accessed the server as a privileged user, and want to become ‘root’, you can issue a sudo su -. Otherwise, you will have to prefix most commands with sudo, e.g.

sudo apt-get install something