Prerequisites

🧙‍♂️ Mandatory Skills for Stake Pool Operators

As a Stake Pool Operator (SPO) for Cardano, you need:

• Operational knowledge of how to set up, run and maintain a Cardano node continuously

• A commitment to maintain your node 24/7/365

• System operation skills including general knowledge of using Bash scripts, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, systemd services and cron jobs

• Server administration skills (operational and maintenance)

• Fundamental understanding of networking

🧙 Mandatory Experience for Stake Pool Operators

• Experience of development and operations (DevOps)

• Experience in how to harden and secure a server.

• In the Cardano Developer Portal, successfully complete the section Operate a Stake Pool including the Stake Pool Course

🛑 Before continuing this guide, you must satisfy the above requirements. 🚧

🎗️ Minimum Stake Pool Hardware Requirements

• Two separate servers: 1 block producer node, 1 unregistered relay node using legacy network topology

• One air-gapped offline machine (cold environment)

• Operating system: 64-bit Linux (i.e. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)

• Processor: An Intel or AMD x86 processor with two or more cores, at 2GHz or faster

• Memory: 24GB RAM (including swap space)

• Storage: 200GB free storage

• Internet: Static IP address and a broadband connection supporting speeds at least 10 Mbps

• Data Plan: at least 1GB per hour. 720GB per month.

• Power: Reliable electrical power

• ADA balance: at least 505 ADA for pool deposit and transaction fees

🏋️‍♂️ Recommended Future-proof Stake Pool Hardware Setup

• Four separate servers: 1 block producer node, 3 relay nodes (2 registered relays using peer-to-peer networking and 1 unregistered relay using legacy network topology)

• One air-gapped offline machine (cold environment)

• Operating system: 64-bit Linux (i.e. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)

• Processor: 4 core or higher CPU

• Memory: 24GB+ RAM

• Storage: 250GB+ free storage

• Internet: Static IP addresses and broadband connections supporting speeds of at least 100 Mbps

• Data Plan: Unlimited

• Power: Reliable electrical power with UPS

• ADA balance: more pledge is better, to be determined by a0, the pledge influence factor

🔓 Recommended Stake Pool Security

If you need ideas on how to harden your stake pool's nodes, refer to this guide.

🛠️ Setup Ubuntu

Refer to the respective guide to Install Ubuntu Server or Install Ubuntu Desktop.

🧱 Rebuilding Nodes

If you are rebuilding or reusing an existing cardano-node installation, refer to the section Resetting an Installation.