Running node on Google Free Tier

1

I’ve started a algorand node on my Google Always Free Compute Engine yesterday. Since then it’s running for about 13 hours and only half of total transactions have been validated.

Last committed block: 629868
Time since last block: 0.0s
Sync Time: 46952.5s

Always Free Tier have the following hardware:

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 85
model name	: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU @ 2.00GHz
stepping	: 3
microcode	: 0x1
cpu MHz		: 2000.172
cache size	: 56320 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 1
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 1
apicid		: 0
initial apicid	: 0
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 13
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 hle avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid rtm mpx avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves arat arch_capabilities
bugs		: cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf
bogomips	: 4000.34
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 46 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         595544      345744       38992        6992      210808      116156
Swap:             0           0           0

Any advice?

2

Hi @fabiorush, the catchup process is definitely going to take longer and longer as time goes by and the blockchain gets longer. I haven’t done any benchmarking, so I’m not sure how long this is expected to take, but this sounds about right.

I think that most of the work being done is compute bound, but the disk also has a lot of activity so may be a bottleneck as well. I would take a look at the processor activity with something like top and make sure algod is running near 100%.

3

The situation was normalized:

image
image.png1572×612 42.7 KB

4

Consider comparing the “Last committed block” that you’ve received from algod
with the “Latest Block” that is reported by https://algoexplorer.io

( that would give you some objective reference outside the scope of your machine )