Intermediate

How to Run an Avalanche Node with Amazon Web Services (AWS)

This tutorial will guide you through the process of setting up an Avalanche node on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Requirements include an AWS account, terminal for SSH access, and secure storage for file backups. The tutorial assumes a Unix-style terminal on your local machine. Windows users may need to modify some commands. The tutorial covers logging into AWS, creating a key pair, creating a security group, launching an EC2 instance, adding storage, tags, security group, and downloading and installing the Avalanche binary.

Introduction

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This tutorial will walk you through the process of setting up an Avalanche node on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Cloud hosting provides security, reliability, and accessibility for your node.

Requirements:

• An AWS account

• A terminal for SSH access to your AWS machine

• Secure storage for files backup

Note: This tutorial assumes a Unix-style terminal on your local machine. Windows users may need to modify some of the commands used.

Log Into AWS

Sign up for AWS is not covered in this tutorial. Refer to Amazon’s instructions here.

For added security, it’s recommended to enable Multi-Factor Authentication for your AWS root user account. Check Amazon’s documentation for guidance.

After setting up your account, create a new EC2 instance via the AWS Management Console and access the EC2 dashboard.

To log into the EC2 instance, you will need a key on your local machine that grants access to the instance. First, create that key so that it can be assigned to the EC2 instance later on. On the bar on the left side, under Network & Security, select Key Pairs.

 

Select Create key pair to launch the key pair creation wizard.

This opens the Security Groups panel. Click Create security group in the top right of the Security Groups panel.

You’ll need to specify what inbound traffic is allowed. Allow SSH traffic from your IP address so that you can log into your EC2 instance. (Each time your ISP changes your IP address, you will need to modify this rule. If your ISP changes regularly, you may allow SSH traffic from anywhere to avoid having to modify this rule frequently.) Allow TCP traffic on port 9651 so your node can communicate with other nodes on the network. Allow TCP traffic on port 9650 from your IP so you can make API calls to your node. It’s important that you only allow traffic on this port from your IP. If you allow incoming traffic from anywhere, this could be used as an denial of service attack vector. Finally, allow all outbound traffic.

Add a tag to the new security group with key Name and valueAvalanche Security Group. This will enable us to know what this security group is when we see it in the list of security groups.

Click Create security group. You should see the new security group in the list of security groups.

Launch an EC2 Instance​

Now you’re ready to launch an EC2 instance. Go to the EC2 Dashboard and select Launch instance.

Select Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (HVM), SSD Volume Type for the operating system.

Next, choose your instance type. This defines the hardware specifications of the cloud instance. In this tutorial we set up a c5.2xlarge. This should be more than powerful enough since Avalanche is a lightweight consensus protocol. To create a c5.2xlarge instance, select the Compute-optimized option from the filter drop-down menu.

Select the checkbox next to the c5.2xlarge instance in the table.

Click the Next: Configure Instance Details button in the bottom right-hand corner.

The instance details can stay as their defaults.

Optional: Using Reserved Instances​

By default, you will be charged hourly for running your EC2 instance. For a long term usage that is not optimal.

You could save money by using a Reserved Instance. With a reserved instance, you pay upfront for an entire year of EC2 usage, and receive a lower per-hour rate in exchange for locking in. If you intend to run a node for a long time and don’t want to risk service interruptions, this is a good option to save money. Again, do your own research before selecting this option.

Add Storage, Tags, Security Group​

Click the Next: Add Storage button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

You need to add space to your instance’s disk. You should start with at least 700GB of disk space. Although upgrades to reduce disk usage are always in development, on average the database will continually grow, so you need to constantly monitor disk usage on the node and increase disk space if needed.

Note that the image below shows 100GB as disk size, which was appropriate at the time the screenshot was taken. You should check the current recommended disk space size before entering the actual value here

Click Next: Add Tags in the bottom right corner of the screen to add tags to the instance. Tags enable us to associate metadata with our instance. Add a tag with key Name and value My Avalanche Node. This will make it clear what this instance is on your list of EC2 instances.

Now assign the security group created earlier to the instance. Choose Select an existing security group and choose the security group created earlier.

Finally, click Review and Launch in the bottom right. A review page will show the details of the instance you’re about to launch. Review those, and if all looks good, click the blue Launch button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

You’ll be asked to select a key pair for this instance. Select Choose an existing key pair and then select the avalanche key pair you made earlier in the tutorial. Check the box acknowledging that you have access to the .pem or .ppk file created earlier (make sure you’ve backed it up!) and then click Launch Instances.

You should see a new pop up that confirms the instance is launching!

Assign an Elastic IP​

By default, your instance will not have a fixed IP. Let’s give it a fixed IP through AWS’s Elastic IP service. Go back to the EC2 dashboard. Under Network & Security, select Elastic IPs.

Select Allocate Elastic IP address.

Select the region your instance is running in, and choose to use Amazon’s pool of IPv4 addresses. Click Allocate.

Select the Elastic IP you just created from the Elastic IP manager. From the Actions drop-down, choose Associate Elastic IP address.

Select the newly created EC2 instance. This opens a details panel with information about the instance.

mv avalanche.pem ~/.ssh

Add it to the SSH agent so that we can use it to SSH into your EC2 instance, and mark it as read-only.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/avalanche.pem; chmod 400 ~/.ssh/avalanche.pem

SSH into the instance. (Remember to replace PUBLICIP with the public IP field from earlier.)

ssh ubuntu@PUBLICIP

If the permissions are not set correctly, you will see the following error.

sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade -y; sudo reboot

This also reboots the instance. Wait 5 minutes, then log in again by running this command on your local machine:

ssh ubuntu@PUBLICIP

You’re logged into the EC2 instance again. Now we’ll need to set up our Avalanche node. To do this, follow the Set Up Avalanche Node With Installer tutorial which automates the installation process. You will need the PUBLICIP we set up earlier.

Your AvalancheGo node should now be running and in the process of bootstrapping, which can take a few hours. To check if it’s done, you can issue an API call using curl. If you’re making the request from the EC2 instance, the request is:

curl -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "id"     :1,
    "method" :"info.isBootstrapped",
    "params": {
        "chain":"X"
    }
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' 127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

Once the node is finished bootstrapping, the response will be:

{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "result": {
        "isBootstrapped": true
    },
    "id": 1
}

You can continue on, even if AvalancheGo isn’t done bootstrapping.

In order to make your node a validator, you’ll need its node ID. To get it, run:

curl -X POST --data '{
    "jsonrpc":"2.0",
    "id"     :1,
    "method" :"info.getNodeID"
}' -H 'content-type:application/json;' 127.0.0.1:9650/ext/info

The response contains the node ID.

{"jsonrpc":"2.0","result":{"nodeID":"NodeID-DznHmm3o7RkmpLkWMn9NqafH66mqunXbM"},"id":1}

In the above example the node ID isNodeID-DznHmm3o7RkmpLkWMn9NqafH66mqunXbM. Copy your node ID for later. Your node ID is not a secret, so you can just paste it into a text editor.

AvalancheGo has other APIs, such as the Health API, that may be used to interact with the node. Some APIs are disabled by default. To enable such APIs, modify the ExecStart section of /etc/systemd/system/avalanchego.service (created during the installation process) to include flags that enable these endpoints. Don’t manually enable any APIs unless you have a reason to

Back up the node’s staking key and certificate in case the EC2 instance is corrupted or otherwise unavailable. The node’s ID is derived from its staking key and certificate. If you lose your staking key or certificate then your node will get a new node ID, which could cause you to become ineligible for a staking reward if your node is a validator. It is very strongly advised that you copy your node’s staking key and certificate. The first time you run a node, it will generate a new staking key/certificate pair and store them in directory /home/ubuntu/.avalanchego/staking.

Exit out of the SSH instance by running:

exit

Now you’re no longer connected to the EC2 instance; you’re back on your local machine.

To copy the staking key and certificate to your machine, run the following command. As always, replace PUBLICIP.

scp -r ubuntu@PUBLICIP:/home/ubuntu/.avalanchego/staking ~/aws_avalanche_backup

Now your staking key and certificate are in directory ~/aws_avalanche_backup . The contents of this directory are secret. You should hold this directory on storage not connected to the internet (like an external hard drive.)

Upgrading Your Node​

AvalancheGo is an ongoing project and there are regular version upgrades. Most upgrades are recommended but not required. Advance notice will be given for upgrades that are not backwards compatible. To update your node to the latest version, SSH into your AWS instance as before and run the installer script again.

./avalanchego-installer.sh

Your machine is now running the newest AvalancheGo version. To see the status of the AvalancheGo service, run sudo systemctl status avalanchego.

Increase Volume Size​

If you need to increase the volume size, follow these instructions from AWS:

• Request modifications to your EBS volumes

• Extend a Linux file system after resizing a volume

Wrap Up​

That’s it! You now have an AvalancheGo node running on an AWS EC2 instance. We recommend setting up node monitoring for your AvalancheGo node. We also recommend setting up AWS billing alerts so you’re not surprised when the bill arrives.