1  # Introduction
 2  
 3  Hardware requirements may vary based in what mode the node is running, the network and it is supposed to run full sync or restore from database snapshot. Running a full node to do a full sync being the most resource intensive.
 4  Requirements would also vary based on the node configuration, API requests and eventually on future consensus protocol and features.
 5  
 6  This recommendations are for nodes part of the **Aeternity Mainnet**
 7  
 8  Last update: **October 1, 2024**
 9  
10  ## Summary
11  
12  Running a full node with full sync now and then (i.e. once per month):
13  
14  - Intel(R) CPU 2 cores @ 3.0Ghz
15  - 8GB of RAM
16  - 500GB SSD storage
17  - 500GB bandwidth
18  
19  ## Processor
20  
21  A recent generation of Intel(R) 2 CPU logical cores @ 2.5Ghz should cover normal operations.
22  However, during initial full sync the process is also CPU bound,
23  so more cores and higher frequency is recommended, for example 2 CPU cores @ 3.0GHz.
24  
25  ## Memory
26  
27  It is recommended to use at least 8GB RAM.
28  However 4GB of RAM should be also good enough for modest cases.
29  
30  ## Storage
31  
32  During initial full sync the node is very disk I/O intensive.
33  A disk with good I/O throughput is recommended in this case, that's usually a SSDs.
34  However, after the initial sync the node can run perfectly fine on a commodity HDDs.
35  
36  ### Full Node
37  
38  Database size as of the moment of this writing is 270GB and grows with 13.5GB per month.
39  So a reasonable disk space allocation for 1 year horizon would be **450GB**.
40  
41  ### Lightweight Node
42  
43  Database size as of the moment of this writing is 60GB and grows with 3GB per month.
44  So a reasonable disk space allocation for 1 year horizon would be **100GB**.
45  
46  ## Bandwidth
47  
48  During the normal operations the node needs up to 30KB/s inbound and up to 30KB/s outbound traffic.
49  That's about 78GB/mo per direction or 156GB/mo total.
50  
51  Notice that, fully utilized chain might go up to 300-500KB/s for gossip traffic.
52  
53  However during initial full sync this requirement goes as high as 1MB/s but 400KB/s on average inbound traffic.