Maximum number of channels with Raspberry 4

General Discussions
1

Hi guys,

i have a good amount of Bitcoin thanks to God. So i was seriously thinking to step up and upgrade my current 1+ year old little Lightning node (running on Umbrel) with just 13 channels and 13Mil sat capability on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB RAM (https://lightningnetwork.plus/nodes/031b0b9df8e34e53de02b4f225bea41a3d0d9e043f403a8ac9a38fb1f3289b5946) in to a kickass one with 10+ Bitcoin capability and so thousands of high size channels consequentially.

Now my main concern atm is the hardware since i assume that my current Raspberry will not be able to handle properly such traffic i`m asking to you guys, especially the experts, what kind of hardware i would need and if Umbrel as OS would be still viable without significant issues.

Thank you in advance.

Gio.

2

Hi,

I have over 200 transactions a day on good days. In my experience, the maximum number of open channels was 140 - 150. From this number, my Pi 4B 4GB crashed several times. I then had to close unprofitable channels and am now always under 120 channels. since then I had no more problems.

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3

Yes i was pretty sure that my little Rasp can`t sustain an amount of traffic generated by thousands of channels. Thank you anyway for your feedback, so at least i know roughly what is the limit point.

Now i would like to hear from others with xp what kind of list of hardware is required for such large node.

Cheers.

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4

Can anyone here who run an umbrel LN node with huge capability (like 2+ BTC and hundreds if not thousands of active channels) share his current hardware configuration and what kind of memory/CPU/SSD load is having?

Thank you in advance.

5

I invoke @DarthCoin
He mentioned getting a Mini PC like an Intel NUC would be a good idea. You can get those with an good processor like an Intel i5 or i7, 16GB of RAM and a nice SSD and you are golden. The good thing about Mini PCs is that they won’t consume much energy and the small form factor makes them easy to install anywhere unlike a full size PC.
If you plan on having a 10+ BTC node then you are probably getting one of the higher end Mini PCs or even a full size Micro ATX PC why not?

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6

Thank you Francis,
yeah i was thinking to a similar configuration. But i love to assemble PCs and i would love to have a complete list of top hardware for such a large node, like f.e. within a budget of 3-4k what is the best CPU, mobo, RAM, SSDs (maybe M.2) and maybe case to assemble a kick ass node like that running perfectly on Ubuntu or even Umbrel itself.