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 for block producer node, 1 for relay node

• One air-gapped offline machine (cold environment)

• Operating system: 64-bit Linux (i.e. Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS)

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

• Memory: 16GB RAM

• Storage: 150GB 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

• Three separate servers: 1 for block producer node, 2 for relay nodes

• One air-gapped offline machine (cold environment)

• Operating system: 64-bit Linux (i.e. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS)

• Processor: 4 core or higher CPU

• Memory: 16GB+ of RAM

• Storage: 256GB+ SSD

• 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

If you need to install Ubuntu Server, refer to this guide.

For instructions on installing Ubuntu Desktop, refer to this guide.

🧱 Rebuilding Nodes

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