Quote from: BitcoinFX on Today at 11:58:18 AM

Quote from: Paleus on December 02, 2020, 10:11:52 PM

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I have heard people on this forum recommend renting server space in order to host a full node. I am wondering if this is a better option than hosting locally and what the costs associated would be. Performance and security are top priorities. I am looking at running a full node continuously, not just for a temporary time.

Running a Bitcoin full node on a VPS server instance is much more costly (in the long-term) than running a full node on your 'home' PC.

Whilst you can host a pruned node (for around $5 a month), with VPS / linux server companies such as digital ocean and vultr, hosting a full node at 300+ GB requires block storage which will set you back around $1.00/mo per 10 GB of storage i.e. around $55 a month minimum for a 500 GB instance.

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I'm actually in the process of writing a guide for setting up a $5 Linux VPS running a pruned Bitcoin node (as a dual stack node with Tor .onion, optional) for my 'Bitcoin on Tor addnodes project' see: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5177001.0 - however the guide likely won't be published until after the Tor v3 .onion rollout in mid 2021.

It is also possible to effectively CPU mine various altcoins utilizing cpulimit at 75% max (so that the VPS companies won't ban you!), to offset the cost of running a Bitcoin pruned VPS node 'cloud' instance.

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TBH I find it rather surprising that the OP has recently posted this topic;

Tutorial: How To Fork Bitcoin
- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5295647.0

... and yet seemingly is unaware of what is required in terms of 'hosting' a full Bitcoin server in the cloud !?

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Whilst we are all always learning, in regards to Bitcoin, as one of the oldest and active members of this forum, topics like this one just highlight to me the often great disparity between users technical knowledge and what gets interest / help / funding to move forward with what folks seemingly need and want to achieve.

I suppose the crux of my questioning on efficiency revolves around storage of the blockchain and the experiences of bitcointalk users storing the blockchain in an external HDD and SSD. It would seem due to the continuous requirement of read/write access, using a SSD is almost always better performance wise. In order to have a forward-compatible node, we would need a SSD of at least 350 GB at this point.

Someone here made the comment that a full node shouldn't be hosted in the cloud in the very place but should only be hosted on hardware that you actually own and can physically access. I tend to agree with the observation that if you are using someone else's hardware than it is not truly YOUR node. In terms of efficiency, it seems in the long run it would actually be most cost-efficiency to pony up the costs for hardware that you yourself host locally, and in the case of storage, this would require a SSD of at least 350 GB - might as well buy 1 TB while you are at it.

Thank you all for your input.