# Host Machine Requirements

You can choose to run your validator node either On-Premise on your own hardware or on a virtual machine / cloud computing instance of your choosing. If you have any questions please contact the EWF NetOps team: <netops@energyweb.org>

***The following specifications are strongly recommended, but validators are free to configure their host machine at their discretion in accordance with relevant internal policies or requirements. Please note that hosting a node on a machine with insufficient CPU, storage, RAM, and/or networking capacity may result in node failure (e.g. unable to connect to peers, unable to synchronize, unable to seal blocks) and require extra labor to reconfigure the host machine.***&#x20;

#### **On-Premise Hardware**

A on-premise node should have these specs or higher. For security reasons these resources  must be reserved for the validator node and not shared with other workloads.

1. Modern Multi-core x64 CPU (at least 4 threads, preferably Xeon-class)
2. 8GB RAM (preferably ECC)
3. Local SSD storage, 300 GB free capacity for blockchain, redundant in RAID-1
4. 1 GBit NIC

#### Cloud Environments

The following specifications are strongly recommended based on the most common cloud environments used by existing EW Chain validators. You may select any cloud provider of your choosing

**Amazon AWS**

The following EC2 instance sizes are appropriate to run validators. These resources should be reserved for the validator node and not shared with other workloads.

* m5.xlarge
* m5.2xlarge
* m5a.xlarge
* m5a.2xlarge
* c5.xlarge
* c5.2xlarge

The default EBS storage assigned (normally 8GB) is not large enough to run the node. Make sure to run the node with following EBS storage settings:

* General Purpose SSD (gp2)
* at least 300GB size

**Microsoft Azure**

The following Azure Virtual Machine sizes are suitable to run a validator. These resources should be reserved for the validator node and not shared with other workloads.

* D4s\_v3
* DS3\_v2
* B4ms

Use Premium SSD as attached storage with a size of at least 300GB.

**Google Cloud**

The following Google Cloud Virtual Machine sizes are suitable to run a validator node. These resources should be reserved for the validator node and not shared with other workloads.&#x20;

* n2-standard-4 and above: <https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/general-purpose-machines#n2\\_machines>

**Digital Ocean**

The following Digital Ocean Virtual Machine sizes are suitable to run a validator. These resources should be reserved for the validator node and not shared with other workloads.

* General Purpose Droplet: 16 GB memory, 4vCPU
* CPU-Optimized Droplet: 8 GB memory, 4vCPU

Use Block Storage as attached SSD storage with a size of at least 300 GB.&#x20;

## **Connectivity Requirements**

The following requirements should be met to ensure proper operation:

* Wired connection with 100 MBit/s symmetric link to the internet
* Low latency connection to next internet hop (<5ms)
* No data volume limitations

Even though we recommend a 100MBit/s connection, that connection will likely not be saturated by the node. You can expect 10-30MBit/s when the chain is under load. Traffic will mainly flow on port 30303 (udp/tcp).

##


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.energyweb.org/ewc-validator-documentation/guides/installing-a-validator-node/host-machine-requirements.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.