Overview
A non-voting Solana node downloads ledger shredded blocks and updates the state machine without signing voting transactions, providing clean JSON-RPC access.
Deployment Prerequisites
- Hardware: 16 Cores (32 Threads), 128 GB RAM (256 GB recommended), 2x 1 TB NVMe RAID 0.
- Network: 1 Gbps symmetric unmetered fiber.
- Linux Kernel: Sysctl tuning required for UDP buffers and virtual memory map counts.
1
Linux System Tuning
Linux / macOS Shell (Bash)Elevated Sudo / Admin
sudo bash -c 'cat > /etc/sysctl.d/21-solana-validator.conf <<EOF
net.core.rmem_max=134217728
net.core.rmem_default=134217728
net.core.wmem_max=134217728
net.core.wmem_default=134217728
vm.max_map_count=1000000
EOF'
sudo sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/21-solana-validator.conf2
Launch Agave RPC Daemon
Linux / macOS Shell (Bash)
agave-validator --identity /var/lib/solana/identity.json --no-voting --ledger /var/lib/solana/ledger --accounts /var/lib/solana/accounts --rpc-port 8899 --full-rpc-api --entrypoint entrypoint.mainnet-beta.solana.com:8001