PFN Requirements

To ensure that your public fullnode (PFN) operates smoothly, it should meet the requirements specified in this document.

Hardware requirements

For running a production-grade PFN, we recommend that your hardware meet the same requirements as a validator or VFN. You can see the hardware requirements for these nodes, here: validator and VFN hardware requirements.

If you wish to run a PFN for development or testing only, lower hardware specs can be used. But, it should not be used in production as it will experience degradation under load. Example lower hardware specs for a PFN are:

• CPU: 8 cores, 16 threads (Intel Xeon Skylake or newer).
• Memory: 32GB RAM.

Minimum hardware requirements

Failing to meet the minimum hardware requirements for a production-grade PFN mean that your PFN will likely experience degradation under load and general instability in production environments.

Network requirements and ports

When you are running a PFN, you are required to open network ports on your nodes to allow other nodes (i.e., peers) to connect to you. There are different Aptos network types, and each network type uses a different port. However, the only network type that a PFN uses is the public network, where PFNs to connect to other PFNs and VFNs.

Your PFN can be configured so that the public network operates using a specific port on your node. You can configure the port settings using the node configuration YAML file. Here is an example configuration file for a PFN that configures the public network to use port 6180.

Port settings

The recommendations described below assume the default port settings used by PFNs. If you have changed the default port settings in your configuration file, then you should adjust the recommendations accordingly.

Exposing ports

Unless explicitly required, we recommend that you do not expose any other ports while operating a PFN. This is because exposing additional ports can increase the attack surface of your node and make it more vulnerable to adversaries.

Running a PFN:

Assuming default ports are used, the following should be configured for PFNs:

• Open the following TCP ports:
  • 6182 – Public network: Open this port publicly to enable other PFNs to connect to your PFN.
• Close the following TCP ports:
  • 9101 – Inspection service: Close this port to prevent unauthorized metric inspection.
  • 9102 – Admin service: Close this port to prevent unauthorized admin service interaction.
  • 80/8080 REST API: Close this port to prevent unauthorized REST API access.

Exposing services

The inspection service port (9101), admin service port (9102) and the REST API port (80 or 8080) are likely useful for your internal network, e.g., application development and debugging. However, the inspection service port and the admin service port should never be exposed publicly as they can be easily abused. Similarly, if you choose to expose the REST API endpoint publicly, you should deploy an additional authentication or rate-limiting mechanism to prevent abuse.

Storage requirements

The amount of data stored by Aptos PFNs depends on the ledger history (length) of the blockchain and the number of on-chain states (e.g., accounts and resources). Both the ledger history and the number of on-chain states depend on several additional factors, including the age of the blockchain, the average transaction rate over time, and the configuration of the ledger database pruner. At the time of writing, we estimate that testnet and mainnet PFNs require several 100's of GB of storage.

Note that because archival nodes store the entire history of the blockchain, the database size on archival nodes will continue to grow unbounded. As a result, we cannot provide a recommendation for archival node storage sizes.

Devnet blockchain storage

The Aptos devnet is currently reset on a weekly basis. If you are deploying a devnet PFN, this means that the storage will be reset (i.e., wiped) every week. See the #devnet-release channel on the Aptos Discord.