Re: [tor-relays] Hardware requirements for a fast Tor relay

It's surprising that you're running into CPU issues. It's typically RAM that is exhausted first.

I have 5 x Dual Core 256MB Tor Relay Nodes loadbalanced as a Single Middle Relay that never have CPU issues. It's always a matter of running out of RAM for me. The loadbalanced Tor Relay maintains between 6K-8K circuits and between 100-200GB of Tor traffic per day.

Presently, 2 of the Tor Nodes are down, but you can see that for those Tor Nodes that are up my CPU load is low and memory is approaching the 32MB cutoff that I've configured.

# stat-tor-nodes

Living_Room-C293

12:52:23 up 1 day, 12:42, load average: 0.80, 0.54, 0.46

Data_Center-D448

12:52:24 up 1 day, 12:42, load average: 0.69, 0.69, 0.71

Office-3C73

12:52:24 up 1 day, 12:41, load average: 2.58, 2.84, 3.75

Garage-AE61

12:52:25 up 1 day, 12:42, load average: 0.00, 0.07, 0.10

Wiring_Closet-5610

12:52:25 up 1 day, 12:41, load average: 0.24, 0.33, 0.41

Living_Room-C293

MemFree: 110696 kB

Data_Center-D448

MemFree: 42744 kB

Office-3C73

MemFree: 86792 kB

Garage-AE61

MemFree: 193384 kB

Wiring_Closet-5610

MemFree: 38684 kB

Living_Room-C293

2000

Data_Center-D448

2710

Office-3C73

Garage-AE61

Wiring_Closet-5610

1854

It might help to provide your torrc config.

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On Tuesday, November 9, 2021, 8:48:09 AM PST, failing.flyaway443--- via tor-relays <tor-relays@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi everyone,

about two weeks ago, I signed up for a VPS with a cloud provider and set up a Tor relay. I installed Debian 11 Bullseye, secured it, and then set up Tor 0.4.6.8 and started the relay.

The VPS had the following specs: 1vCore, 2GB RAM, 40TB traffic per month on a 1Gbit/s link. I throttled the traffic accordingly so that the monthly limit of 40TB would not be exceeded. Nevertheless, the CPU load was extreme, the server was running at full capacity and crashed several times.

Since I want to help the Tor network with a fast relay I now signed up for a root server which has the following specs: Dual core CPU, 8GB ECC RAM, 2,5Gbit link, 1Gbit guaranteed, unlimited traffic.

I set this thing up with Debian 11 Bullseye again and Tor 0.4.6.8. Since my bandwith gets throttled when I use more than a certain amount of traffic/month and at the same time (!) on average more than a certain amount of bandwith for more than one hour, I set the MaxBandwith to 1000Mbit/sec (equals 125MB/sec).

This relay is up and running for a few days now, and I already have around 4000 incoming and outgoing connections. My bandwith is not fully used yet, but sometimes I see spikes of 20MB/s. What concerns me is that the CPU load again is sometimes 40-50% on both cores, even though this relay is not fully used yet.

Can somebody tell me if it is even possible to run such a fast relay on this hardware?

Should I set a more restrictive bandwith throttle myself, or go for a quad core CPU?

I don't think I will ever run out of RAM this time, since I have 8GB.

Thank you for your advice! All the best!

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