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I was thinking of hosting my own node. I have a fast Amazon AWS server, however not enough storage to host a full node. What I was thinking, is to host a full node on the AWS client, but get it to store and write to a blockchain on a different database server, where storage is cheaper.
Is this possible? Or is this not classified as a full node?
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Nope it's no longer a full node since peers can not download the full blockchain from you. However some, including core devs, will still refer to pruned nodes as full nodes. Since 0.12.0 and BIP130, blocks can be announced by header and pruned nodes can serve the blocks they have.
How much storage do you have available? Do you have over 2 GB?
Have you looked into running a pruned node? After initial launch of bitcoin core, close it and create a bitcoin.conf file with prune = 550. https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.12.0#wallet-pruning
Also take into consideration of bandwidth usage. When I run nodes on a VPS I usually cut the bandwidth too. You can set these in your bitcoin.conf as well using maxuploadtarget and maxconnections.
maxuploadtarget=20
maxconnections=16
This way you can still have a fully functioning Bitcoin wallet but make it more affordable to run a VPS. Again it's not a full node, but it will have full functionality for running bitcoind on a server.
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If you are running bitcoind on a VPS it will expect the blockchain to be stored on the local disk. You could setup a remote file system using NFS or SMB but this will probably slow down the node and make it less responsive. Amazon already has one of the cheapest cost's for storage why not just increase the size of the drive? If you are talking about moving the blockchain from disk and storing it in a database that cannot be done without modifying the bitcoin source code.
I have 30gb of storage. Is it possible to allow others to download from the database, through me? – Whyte the Weeabear – 2016-09-06T00:55:33.870
No sorry, the current blockchain is over 60GB, so you would need more than that available in storage. – m1xolyd1an – 2016-09-06T02:47:50.397
Could I run a pruned node with 30gb? – Whyte the Weeabear – 2016-09-06T02:48:52.080
Yes, absolutely. A 5GB VPS could run a pruned node, so a 30GB service would have more than enough storage space available. – m1xolyd1an – 2016-09-06T03:07:26.483
1I always took "full node" to refer to the node's function of completely verifying the Bitcoin network's state. I've seen several statements (also from Core developers) that still refer to nodes with pruning mode enabled as "full nodes", so I don't agree with your first and last sentence. Besides, since 0.12.0 and BIP130, blocks can be announced by header and pruned nodes can serve the blocks they have (if not the complete blockchain). – Murch – 2016-09-06T09:32:49.560
@m1xolyd1an: also see my follow-up question: What is the meaning of the term “full-node”?
– Murch – 2016-09-06T12:33:33.460