Solana Validator

Deploy a Solana Validator via Nixos and Terraform

Using NixOS and Terraform deploying a solana validator is easy and can be done in a few minutes.

For a more detailed look at the deployment read DEPLOYMENT.md

This will

• Install the required Solana packages
• Create required keys
• Start a systemd service running a validator

Steps

• Configure your AWS Credentials with Terraform
• Configure Terraform

terraform init 
terraform apply # will output an IP that you can log into with the given `.pem` file in your AWS credentials

This provisioning will create all the keys nessecary to start a devnet validator but has all of the required components to run a mainnet-beta validator. You simply need to create the keys and slightly change the configuration

Refer to generating keys in the solana documentation to create the validator keypair, withdraw authority, and vote account keys that are nessecary

Change the solana config solana config set --url http://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com

Change the service file entrypoint in /etc/nixos/services/service.nix --entrypoint entrypoint.mainnet-beta.solana.com:8001

Note

Note there might already be a default vpc or subnet in your AWS region in which case you can define your subnet_id and vpc_id. For example

resource "aws_security_group" "egress_ports" {
  vpc_id = aws_default_vpc.default.id
  ...
  
and 

resource "aws_instance" "machine" {
  ami             = module.nixos_image.ami
  instance_type   = var.instance_type
  security_groups = [aws_security_group.egress_ports.id]
  subnet_id       = aws_default_subnet.default_az1.id
  ...

Otherwise a deafult vpc and subnet are defined with

# definitions for default vpc and subnet if no default in the region
resource "aws_default_vpc" "default" {
  tags = {
    Name = "Default VPC"
  }
}

resource "aws_default_subnet" "default_az1" {
  availability_zone = "us-east-2a"

  tags = {
    Name = "Default subnet for us-east-2a"
  }
}