Skip to content

Cloud Tutorial

Read the Cardano documentation on how to Oparate a Stake Pool.

This tutorial will guide you through deploying a stake pool to a cloud host using spo-anywhere.

Clout Host

A cloud host is required as the target of deployment. We tested AWS, DigitalOcean and Hetzner with Ubuntu 24.04.

Creeate a cloud host for the block producer node in the cloud console, API, or via IaC tools such as OpenTofu. The following requirements should be met:

  • At least 4GB RAM
  • Ubuntu 24.04
  • SSH public key authentication configured for root user.

In the case of public testnets and mainnet, there may be additional requirements, such as more RAM and disk space.

Note down the IP address of the host. As an example, we will use an AWS host at IP 12.34.56.78. Verify that SSH works:

1
2
3
ssh root@12.34.56.78
...
# press Ctrl+D to exit

Start new project with flake template

Follow the installation instructions.

A great way to to get started is to use the flake template provided by spo-anywhere. Here's how to start a new project using the cloud template:

1
2
3
mkdir myproject
cd myproject
nix flake init --template github:mlabs-haskell/spo-anywhere#cloud

Configure

Edit configuration.nix. Update your SSH public key and IP address by changing the following lines:

1
  users.users.root.openssh.authorizedKeys.keys = [ "ssh-..." ];

1
      target = "root@12.34.56.78";

For this tutorial, we will use testing private keys included with the project and configured by default, which are suitable for testing but should not be used for public networks. For details on how to generate and configure different keys, see Configure Pool and Generate Keys.

Install

Install NixOS and start configuration with block producer node:

1
nix run .#install

Check

SSH into the machine and check the cardano-node logs:

1
2
ssh root@12.34.56.78
journalctl -e -u cardano-node

When blocks are produced, logs like this should show up:

1
TODO EXAMPLE

For public networks it may be necessary to register the pool first.

Deploy

To modify the configuration, edit e.g. configration.nix and deploy it with a deployment tool, e.g. using nixos-rebuild:

1
nix run nixpkgs#nixos-rebuild -- switch --flake .#spo-node --target-host root@12.34.56.78

Cloud Providers

Cloud provider support is provided by srvos.

To use a different cloud provider, edit flake.nix and replace nixosModules.hardware-amazon with one of the modules listed in the srvos docs, eg:

1
nixosModules.hardware-hetzner-cloud

Then follow this tutorial from the beginning to provision, configure and install a host.

Customize

To learn more, browse available NixOS options in nixpkgs and NixOS options provided by spo-anywhere (see other modules in the menu on the left). You can add these options to configuration.nix to configure the system and then deploy as above.

Public Networks

For public networks, a few more things need to be considered. Here is a partial list:

  • an offline (airgapped) node should used for generating keys and signing transactions
  • a redundat set of relay nodes should be used to connect the block producer node to the network
  • the block producer node should be connected to the relay nodes via private networking (cloud provider dependent or VPN)
  • network security including firewalls, VPNs and jump hosts have to be configured

These are out of scope for this tutorial. A good way to get started deploying cardano-node hosts and networks is with cardano.nix.

Read the Cardano documentation on how to Oparate a Stake Pool for more information.