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Topic: Running bitcoind on Amazon AWS (EC2) help (Read 3902 times)

jlp
sr. member
Activity: 266
Merit: 264
February 07, 2014, 11:10:14 PM
#26
Linode is cheaper and better if you dont need all the various services provided by AWS. AWS is overpriced.

I just found this:  http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/thousands-of-bitcoins-stolen-in-a-hack-on-linode

Thieves stole Bitcoin from Linode clients.  If Linode is insecure, then shouldn't it be last choice for hosting?  Which hosting company, that provides virtual Linux servers, is secure?
newbie
Activity: 10
Merit: 0
February 07, 2014, 10:10:41 PM
#25
Linode is cheaper and better if you dont need all the various services provided by AWS. AWS is overpriced.
sr. member
Activity: 308
Merit: 250
verified ✔
February 07, 2014, 10:08:17 PM
#24
On AWS you can create a Snapshot of your Machine, something AMI don't know exactly.
But i save all my Machines as Snapshots saves some Time.
jlp
sr. member
Activity: 266
Merit: 264
February 07, 2014, 10:01:45 PM
#23
Aws has it's advantages, it takes away a lot of the security headaches and give a true global distributed footprint to any startup, allowing them to deploy nodes all over the world for fast access. Trying to do all that on your own is a nightmare.

But i really hate their pricing structure, nick and dime you for every little resource usage.

I am currently using linode.com, $20 a month true root access, no issues.

Did you find linode.com to be cheaper and better overall than AWS?

Do you plan on running your web app and bitcoind on one or two remote servers?
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
CAUTION: Angry Man with Attitude.
January 26, 2014, 09:30:04 PM
#22
Aws has it's advantages, it takes away a lot of the security headaches and give a true global distributed footprint to any startup, allowing them to deploy nodes all over the world for fast access. Trying to do all that on your own is a nightmare.

But i really hate their pricing structure, nick and dime you for every little resource usage.

I am currently using linode.com, $20 a month true root access, no issues.

They just charged me a free trial for 103 dollars, I contacted them already.
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503
Someone is sitting in the shade today...
January 26, 2014, 09:27:05 PM
#21
Aws has it's advantages, it takes away a lot of the security headaches and give a true global distributed footprint to any startup, allowing them to deploy nodes all over the world for fast access. Trying to do all that on your own is a nightmare.

But i really hate their pricing structure, nick and dime you for every little resource usage.

I am currently using linode.com, $20 a month true root access, no issues.
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
CAUTION: Angry Man with Attitude.
January 26, 2014, 05:48:47 AM
#20
I had no idea Amazon has cloud computing services, wow. Thanks for the info!
It sucks... haha, Even google has cloud services which are way better if you ask me.
member
Activity: 78
Merit: 10
To the moon?
January 25, 2014, 09:35:16 PM
#19
I had no idea Amazon has cloud computing services, wow. Thanks for the info!
hero member
Activity: 899
Merit: 1002
January 25, 2014, 07:59:15 PM
#18
Whatever you use be sure to scrub data before you abandon or cancel your VPS or the next user may be able to recover it
https://github.com/fog/fog/issues/2525
newbie
Activity: 39
Merit: 0
January 25, 2014, 07:40:45 PM
#17
at digitalocean you can run a node for 5$/month (with added swap space). probably cheaper.

i agree, aws is expensive sometimes, and not that much more reliable.
ive had many websites down on aws
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 252
January 25, 2014, 03:31:05 PM
#16
at digitalocean you can run a node for 5$/month (with added swap space). probably cheaper.

would that be enough for a fully functional node with all the normal traffic of a website ? I believe they offer 1 TB of traffic with $5/month package.
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
January 25, 2014, 02:12:23 PM
#15
at digitalocean you can run a node for 5$/month (with added swap space). probably cheaper.
full member
Activity: 309
Merit: 100
January 25, 2014, 01:50:58 PM
#14
Sorry newguy05.

Its about 16gb for the blocks folder alone:

root@i .bitcoin]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvde1       30G   19G   11G  65% /
none            296M     0  296M   0% /dev/shm

[root@i .bitcoin]# du -chs
17G   .
17G   total


Kosta

I actually did this last week. It took days, and I kept blowing away my bitcoind while tweaking things.

I eventually gave in and downloaded the torrent for the recent blocks, but even that took a long time to import, as Disk IO on the micro instances is very limited as well as CPU instances ... Note that the Micro instance is not guaranteed performance as it is their "free" tier"

I eventually went to a m1.large for the two day period to sync all blocks, and now seems to be working fine on the Micro instance once it caught up and I reverted.

kosta

Thanks guys, Kosta do you know the approx disk space requirement after bitcoind is synced up?

I get 30 gb ebs for free, so unmounted the default 8gb and created a new 21 gb mount to use for bitcoind, hope that is enough space.

This to me is one of the biggest shortfalls of bitcoin as time goes on, imagine 30 years from now and when bitcoin actually becomes popular, you almost need to buy hardware with all the blocks preloaded otherwise no retail users can ever catch up.
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 252
January 25, 2014, 03:01:39 AM
#13
You can run this Go implementation of bitcoind with google app engine but who knows what the costs will be. It purposely doesn't include wallet functionaity though https://github.com/conformal/btcd the wallet is here https://github.com/conformal/btcwallet

interesting i will take a look, yeah i looked at google app engine first but it's not a true vps like aws and has limitations in place that prevent bitcoind to run easily without some major tinkering.

In the end i think a regular vps is still my best(economical) option to keep bicoind running 24/7. Something like linode that cost $20 a month and not have to worry about i/o limits etc...

Which vps do you use ? cause other server options like digital ocean, rackspace, etc have bandwidth limitations.
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503
Someone is sitting in the shade today...
January 23, 2014, 11:41:19 AM
#12
You can run this Go implementation of bitcoind with google app engine but who knows what the costs will be. It purposely doesn't include wallet functionaity though https://github.com/conformal/btcd the wallet is here https://github.com/conformal/btcwallet

interesting i will take a look, yeah i looked at google app engine first but it's not a true vps like aws and has limitations in place that prevent bitcoind to run easily without some major tinkering.

In the end i think a regular vps is still my best(economical) option to keep bicoind running 24/7. Something like linode that cost $20 a month and not have to worry about i/o limits etc...
hero member
Activity: 899
Merit: 1002
January 22, 2014, 11:32:59 PM
#11
You can run this Go implementation of bitcoind with google app engine but who knows what the costs will be. It purposely doesn't include wallet functionaity though https://github.com/conformal/btcd the wallet is here https://github.com/conformal/btcwallet
sr. member
Activity: 302
Merit: 250
January 22, 2014, 11:22:02 AM
#10
--snip--
This to me is one of the biggest shortfalls of bitcoin as time goes on, imagine 30 years from now and when bitcoin actually becomes popular, you almost need to buy hardware with all the blocks preloaded otherwise no retail users can ever catch up.
--snip--

Really? Do you not think connection speeds will increase? That seems to me like it might be some serious short-sightedness on you part if I'm honest...

Luckily the architect did not envision that **every** user requires a full copy of the blockchain, only enough to keep it decentralised. Prefessionals, hobbyists and those with the spare resources may keep full purchase ledgers, while "average Joe's" will use light/SPV clients.

/topic derailment.

Also, nice work hosting a bitcoind instance on EC2!  Wink
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 252
January 22, 2014, 05:35:51 AM
#9
ah crap i am already getting billed by amazon for I/O charges and i am only at the 9M difficulty level, this may not be such a bright idea after all, probably just going to stick with regular dedicated vps for 20 bucks a month


EBS
$0.00 for the first 2 million I/O requests under monthly free tier   2,000,000 IOs(used)   $0.00(charge)
$0.10 per 1 million I/O requests   2,393,049 IOs(used)   $0.24(charge)
Total:   $0.24

told ya not everything is "free" in the "Free tier".
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503
Someone is sitting in the shade today...
January 20, 2014, 01:24:22 PM
#8
ah crap i am already getting billed by amazon for I/O charges and i am only at the 9M difficulty level, this may not be such a bright idea after all, probably just going to stick with regular dedicated vps for 20 bucks a month


EBS
$0.00 for the first 2 million I/O requests under monthly free tier   2,000,000 IOs(used)   $0.00(charge)
$0.10 per 1 million I/O requests   2,393,049 IOs(used)   $0.24(charge)
Total:   $0.24
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503
Someone is sitting in the shade today...
January 20, 2014, 12:04:39 PM
#7
I actually did this last week. It took days, and I kept blowing away my bitcoind while tweaking things.

I eventually gave in and downloaded the torrent for the recent blocks, but even that took a long time to import, as Disk IO on the micro instances is very limited as well as CPU instances ... Note that the Micro instance is not guaranteed performance as it is their "free" tier"

I eventually went to a m1.large for the two day period to sync all blocks, and now seems to be working fine on the Micro instance once it caught up and I reverted.

kosta

Thanks guys, Kosta do you know the approx disk space requirement after bitcoind is synced up?

I get 30 gb ebs for free, so unmounted the default 8gb and created a new 21 gb mount to use for bitcoind, hope that is enough space.

This to me is one of the biggest shortfalls of bitcoin as time goes on, imagine 30 years from now and when bitcoin actually becomes popular, you almost need to buy hardware with all the blocks preloaded otherwise no retail users can ever catch up.
sr. member
Activity: 364
Merit: 252
January 20, 2014, 06:56:09 AM
#6
Whoa .. please make sure you do not exceed the "free tier" limit for bandwidth. Cause then you are charged. Apparently its not all that "free". Check the limits or you might be surprised later.
legendary
Activity: 4298
Merit: 1317
January 20, 2014, 03:53:49 AM
#5
You'll want your own EBS to store the blockchain and it will be persistent.  Amazon has lots of information detailing it.
full member
Activity: 309
Merit: 100
January 20, 2014, 12:23:02 AM
#4
I actually did this last week. It took days, and I kept blowing away my bitcoind while tweaking things.

I eventually gave in and downloaded the torrent for the recent blocks, but even that took a long time to import, as Disk IO on the micro instances is very limited as well as CPU instances ... Note that the Micro instance is not guaranteed performance as it is their "free" tier"

I eventually went to a m1.large for the two day period to sync all blocks, and now seems to be working fine on the Micro instance once it caught up and I reverted.

kosta
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503
Someone is sitting in the shade today...
January 19, 2014, 11:20:29 PM
#3
You may want to look at the ec2 ebs which is persistent. I use it for two of my servers (not bitcoin) an for 6 years now have been happy with its reliability.

As far as usage goes, I am not sure off the top of my head it has been so long.

thanks! looks like by default it is already running on EBS, it auto mounted 8 GB of space from EBS when the EC2 instance was created. Now just waiting for the block chain to catch up.

It is taking forever and already used up 3GB of space.   

I wonder if this will be the major flaw of bitcoins, say 20 years from now, how the heck on earth will any new client able to catch up, it will take weeks and tons of space.
legendary
Activity: 4298
Merit: 1317
January 19, 2014, 06:52:06 PM
#2
You may want to look at the ec2 ebs which is persistent. I use it for two of my servers (not bitcoin) an for 6 years now have been happy with its reliability.

As far as usage goes, I am not sure off the top of my head it has been so long.
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503
Someone is sitting in the shade today...
January 19, 2014, 06:22:35 PM
#1
Hi guys, total newbie to amazon's AWS EC2 instances, but am very familiar with linux. Have some questions if anyone can help, thanks!

I have setup a micro EC2 instance using amazon's free trial offer (installed amazon's ami linux), downloaded and have bitcoind running on the server. I can see in the log it's syncing up.  Here are my questions:

1) From my understanding, EC2 instance is not perm, as soon as it shuts down everything is wiped. Which means as soon as it shuts down all the data from bitcoind is wiped and next time i have to resync from block 1.  I must not be using the right tool (EC2), can someone point me in the right direction on what exactly i should be using to fix this? I just want a regular/vps linux server that doesn't wipe the data every time it goes down.

2) Bitcoind is doing massive amount of sync on the network, i can see the network spike up in amazon's monitoring tool, is there an easy way to tell how much in/out network data i have used vs the threshold before i get charged. I clicked on all their links/monitoring but can't figure out where they keep this info.  I plan to leave this running in the background but don't want to get hit with a surprise bill a week later.

Thanks!
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