Three ways to own Solana compute
Fourteen server shapes, three isolation models, one decision: how much of the silicon do you need to own? Shared vCPU from $100, pinned cores with a dedicated private VLAN to the NLN fleet from $245, the whole machine from $253. This page exists to make that decision quickly and honestly.
$ ping -c 5 rpc.nln.clr3.orgrtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.18/0.21/0.27/0.03 ms$ ping -c 5 api.mainnet-beta.solana.comrtt avg 14.9 ms · public internet$ mpstat -P ALL 1 5 | grep -i steal%steal: 0.00 · every core, every sample# pinned cores + private VLAN: what VDS and# bare metal add on top of a VPS.
Own a slice, own the cores, or own the machine
Shared Compute VPS from $100/mo | Deterministic Compute VDS from $245/mo | Dedicated Metal Bare Metal from $458/mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tenancy | Shared host, fair-share vCPU | Pinned physical cores | Entire physical machine |
| CPU steal time | Real, measure with mpstat | 0.00%, contractual | No hypervisor exists |
| RAM ceiling | 64 GB | 128 GB · NUMA-local | 512 GB |
| Storage | 1 NVMe volume | 2–4 NVMe namespaces | 2 physical NVMe drives |
| Network | 1 Gbps · 2 TB egress included | 5–10 Gbps committed QoS | 10 Gbps unshared |
| Path to NLN fleet | Dedicated private VLAN | Dedicated private VLAN | Dedicated private VLAN |
| Provisioning | Same-day, most < 1 h | 2–3 minutes | ~24 hours, burn-in tested |
| SLO | 99.99% monthly | 99.99% monthly | 99.99% network & power |
| Failure recovery | Snapshot restore < 15 min | Live migration < 8 min | IPMI + MTTR < 4 h |
| Mainnet validator | No | No (RAM + I/O floor) | Yes, built for it |
| Choose it when | The workload waits on the network | Consistent compute has a PnL | You need the hardware itself |
| Explore VPS → | Explore VDS → | Explore Bare Metal → |
Start from the workload, not the price list
Bursts CPU on signals, idles between slots. Network-bound 95% of the time.
The bot spends its life waiting on the wire. 8 shared vCPU covers the duty cycle with room to spare, and the money stays in the strategy.
Step up ifmpstat shows steal > 1% in peak hours, or your loop decodes every transaction.
Hot loop on the gRPC feed, decode everything, race a single thread to the trigger.
Pinned cores keep the decode loop consistent: a tail event during your neighbor's burst is a missed trade.
Step up ifthe race comes down to one thread: 4.3 GHz Ryzen metal beats 3.0 GHz virtualized.
Constant ingestion from Yellowstone into Postgres on the same box. Never idles.
16 pinned cores and NUMA-local RAM let ingest and Postgres share a box without sharing tails. Unix-socket DB writes, zero network hop.
Step up ifyou index more than a couple of programs or keep > 40 GB hot in Postgres.
Receive events, transform, fan out over HTTP. Spiky concurrency, light CPU.
16 vCPU absorbs concurrency spikes; shared vCPU is irrelevant when the work is mostly I/O.
Step up ifconcurrency is modest, same architecture, $160 less.
Your own read-only RPC node, ledger and accounts on separate volumes.
32 pinned cores, 128 GB, and four NVMe namespaces handle a non-voting mirror, virtualized, so you can resize as it grows.
Step up ifthe mirror is permanent: a full 64-core physical box, physical drives, no hypervisor.
Learning the operator workflow: vote, restart, snapshot, monitor.
16 vCPU / 64 GB carries a testnet validator. The point is the runbook practice, not the hardware.
Step up ifyou want the exact I/O behavior you will see on mainnet.
Voting on mainnet. Skipped slots cost stake. Hypervisor jitter is disqualifying.
64 high-frequency EPYC 9575F cores, 256 GB, and dual 3.84 TB NVMe is the field-standard build. The vote pipeline never crosses a hypervisor.
Step up ifyou prefer a dual-socket 64-core layout with the same 256 GB.
Custom Geyser plugin feeding your own downstream: full-chain firehose in, structured data out.
Full-chain Geyser is a sustained-everything workload: real drives for the sink, real cores for the decode, 128 GB to breathe.
Step up ifyou want more RAM headroom for the working set: 192 GB on the EPYC 9555P.
The next validator client: tile architecture, AF_XDP, large memory appetite.
Built for it: 64 high-frequency cores, 256 GB, and a Firedancer-tuned image (governor, IRQ affinity, AF_XDP) on request. Need more RAM? We quote custom builds.
Configure across the whole catalog
The smallest box that runs a real Solana workload.
- ·Own kernel, own IP, full root
- ·Fair-share vCPU and network scheduling
- ·Local NVMe storage, nightly snapshots
- ·Key-only SSH from first boot, any OS
- ·Provisioning: Same-day · most within the hour (EU business hours)
- ·SLO: 99.99% monthly · automatic credits
Not for: Sustained CPU above ~60%; move to VDS before tail latency bites.
The production default for trading bots that wait on the network.
- ·Own kernel, own IP, full root
- ·Fair-share vCPU and network scheduling
- ·Local NVMe storage, nightly snapshots
- ·Key-only SSH from first boot, any OS
- ·Provisioning: Same-day · most within the hour (EU business hours)
- ·SLO: 99.99% monthly · automatic credits
Not for: Hot decode loops at full gRPC volume: that is vds.standard territory.
Headroom for fanout, simulation, and testnet validator work.
- ·Own kernel, own IP, full root
- ·Fair-share vCPU and network scheduling
- ·Local NVMe storage, nightly snapshots
- ·Key-only SSH from first boot, any OS
- ·Provisioning: Same-day · most within the hour (EU business hours)
- ·SLO: 99.99% monthly · automatic credits
Not for: Workloads where consistent tail performance has a direct PnL.
Cross-shopFor $105 less, vds.standard trades 8 shared vCPU for 8 pinned cores.
Eight cores nobody else can touch. Steal time: 0.00% by contract.
- ·Physical cores pinned, single socket, no shared hyperthreads
- ·RAM allocated from the same NUMA node as your cores
- ·Committed bandwidth in the QoS class, not borrowed
- ·Dedicated NVMe namespaces, verifiable with lscpu / numactl / mpstat
- ·Provisioning: 2–3 minutes · capacity is held hot
- ·SLO: 99.99% monthly · host-failure migration target < 8 min
Not for: Bursty, mostly-idle workloads: a vps.pro does that for $55 less.
The indexer workhorse: ingest, decode, and Postgres on one NUMA node.
- ·Physical cores pinned, single socket, no shared hyperthreads
- ·RAM allocated from the same NUMA node as your cores
- ·Committed bandwidth in the QoS class, not borrowed
- ·Dedicated NVMe namespaces, verifiable with lscpu / numactl / mpstat
- ·Provisioning: 2–3 minutes · capacity is held hot
- ·SLO: 99.99% monthly · host-failure migration target < 8 min
Not for: Mainnet validators. The RAM ceiling and shared drives rule it out.
The top of virtualization. Past this point, buy the machine.
- ·Physical cores pinned, single socket, no shared hyperthreads
- ·RAM allocated from the same NUMA node as your cores
- ·Committed bandwidth in the QoS class, not borrowed
- ·Dedicated NVMe namespaces, verifiable with lscpu / numactl / mpstat
- ·Provisioning: 2–3 minutes · capacity is held hot
- ·SLO: 99.99% monthly · host-failure migration target < 8 min
Not for: Mainnet voting or >128 GB RAM: step up to a physical 64-core machine.
Cross-shopnln.metal.base: a full 64-core EPYC 9554P, 128 GB, physical NVMe, no hypervisor at all.
Entry metal: high clocks, your own NIC, no hypervisor anywhere.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
Not for: Core-hungry parallel decode: six cores is six cores.
A steady multi-core box for always-on services.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
Not for: Single-thread race paths: clocks are modest here.
The highest clocks in the fleet. Built for single-thread race paths.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
Not for: Wide 64-core parallel decode: pick an EPYC tier for that.
64 cores across two sockets with 256 GB for wide parallel work.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
Not for: Latency-bound single threads: 2.35 GHz is the trade-off for core count.
64 modern EPYC cores: the RPC / validator baseline.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
Not for: Mainnet voting; 128 GB is below the 256 GB field standard.
64 cores with more headroom for heavy RPC and indexer stacks.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
High-frequency 64-core, 256 GB: the mainnet validator turnkey.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
NVIDIA H200 on dual 32-core EPYC, 512 GB: GPU compute.
- ·Full control of IRQ affinity, CPU governor, and kernel
- ·Physical NVMe drives; ledger and accounts DB never share IOPS
- ·10–100 Gbps unshared host networking
- ·IPMI / KVM-over-IP on a dedicated management VLAN
- ·Provisioning: ~24 hours · OS installed, drives validated, burn-in tested
- ·SLO: 99.99% network & power · hardware MTTR < 4 h (business window)
What the private VLAN buys you
One SLA culture across the fleet
- ·VPS pools run fair-share vCPU scheduling with headroom held in reserve
- ·VDS and metal capacity is never shared; pinned capacity is held hot
- ·Spare capacity stays racked and powered, so orders never wait for a host to be carved
- ·AMD EPYC platforms, DDR4 ECC across the fleet
- ·Datacenter-grade storage with redundancy (mdraid1) on virtualized pools
- ·Every metal box burn-in tested before handover: CPU, RAM, drive surface, NIC
- ·VPS: nightly snapshots, restore to a healthy host < 15 min
- ·VDS: live migration off a failing host, target < 8 min
- ·Metal: IPMI / KVM-over-IP always on, hardware MTTR < 4 h in the business window
- ·Committed QoS bandwidth on VDS; 10–100 Gbps dedicated ports on metal
- ·Dedicated private VLAN to the NLN RPC / gRPC / WS fleet included on every VDS and bare-metal server
- ·Fair-share scheduler on shared uplinks; one tenant cannot saturate a host
- ·Full root. No locked kernels, no restricted outbound ports, no inspection
- ·Key-only SSH from first boot; password auth ships disabled
- ·Bring your own ISO: Ubuntu, Debian, Rocky, Arch, NixOS all routine
- ·99.99% monthly rolling, fleet-wide
- ·Credits applied automatically on breach, no ticket required
- ·Only enforcement on your box: outbound SMTP abuse limits
Frequently asked questions
Related products
Shared compute from $100/mo for bots, webhooks, and indexers.
Deterministic compute from $245/mo. Pinned cores, 0.00% steal time.
The whole machine from $253/mo. Validator-, Firedancer-, and GPU-grade.
The endpoint every NLN server reaches over the private VLAN.
The streaming layer trade-adjacent workloads consume.
Managed plugin slots on production validators.
Pick a tier and deploy today
VPS from $100/mo, VDS from $245/mo, bare metal from $253/mo. One dashboard, one bill, one support queue. VDS provisions in minutes; most VPS orders ship within the hour.
Not sure between two SKUs? Send the workload description and an engineer replies with a sizing call, usually same day.
- 01Create an accountEmail and a password. No card required to look around.
- 02Pick tier + paste your SSH keyThe exact specs and prices on this page. No checkout surprises.
- 03Root SSH lands in your inboxKey-only auth, your chosen OS image, ready for the NLN data fleet.