I have run/am running validators using BloxStaking from before The Merge, but after resisting 'staking from home' I figured: (1) Ethereum has intentionally restricted its bandwidth so that home node-running is viable (2) it's important to exercise this right and 'practice what one preaches' in terms of decentralization and (3) if I'm going to run a node, I might as well run a validator too.
I said I would write up a post on how I launched my RocketPool minipool, so here it goes:
First: the hardware. I'm using a "MINISFORUM Venus Series NPB6 Mini PC 13TH Gen Core i7-13620H" MiniPC (for $383 after a $76 coupon). Barebone means I need to bring my own ram and SSD, I went with Crucial for both, getting 32GB of DDR5 RAM (2x16GB SODIMMs for $100) and a 4TB NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD for $200. Installing took zero screws to get into the device (you just push the top corners of the MiniPC until it clicks to unfasten the top panel) & one screw internally for the SSD. The MiniPC box came with an SSD heatsink & fan, but I decided not to install it (and my temps have thus far looked fine).
Next: the OS. One word: DAppnode. Wow this is easy. I had to enable UPnP on my Unifi DreamMachine Router, which is kinda lame from a network security perspective, but I suppose I could have created a separate VLAN just for the PC and enabled UPnP just on said VLAN...anyway...
UPnP makes sense here because there's no 'canonical list of ports' for DAppnode...as you add more software packages, more ports may need to be opened to the external world and it's going to be a P.I.T.A. to manually add all of them.
DAppnode has an autoinstalling ISO, but I still needed a keyboard & screen to boot from my USB stick, hit 'enter' to install etc...etc...
After that it starts it's own WiFi network and has a built-in Wireshark & OpenVPN servers. Wireshark has two configs though...one for accessing from your local network and another for accessing remotely from the external web. The 'global' config doesn't work locally, at least for me.
Then came my choice of Execution and Consensus clients: I went with Besu and Nimbus. I like Nimbus as a fan of Status writ large, and Besu is a minority execution client that needs more node runners (like myself).
Syncing Besu from genesis...I tried waiting for 7 days and still couldn't catch up, I think if I just left it alone it would have caught up, but I kept getting some warnings about 'Archive rolling failed' on some blockheader and thrashing the merkel tree is no joke. Here's an excellent post from Peter of GETH fame explaining why this is the case for everyone. It's actually linked as a help tooltip within DAppnode, so clearly I'm in the same boat.
All that being said, I gave up trying to proverbially "pull myself up by my own bootstraps" and tried Besu's new (beta) Checkpoint sync (not to be confused with Snap sync, which is what I was trying before)...and it had me up and running in 24 hours.
I then one click installed Rocketpool, enabled the Web3Signer "Staking Brain" and now I await the validator entry queue...
Finally, normal Comcast Xfinity home internet wasn't going to cut it. I either had to go with Xfinity Business ($60/month for 50 Mbps down/15 up) or Xfinity Prepaid ($45/month for 50 Mbps down/10 up). Talking to a sales rep and trying to convince them to let me bring my own equipment didn't seem appealing, and I had used Xfinity Prepaid before (until I switched over to postpaid during Covid WFH in order to expense my internet bills with my company). The only downside of Xfinity Prepaid, in my view, is that there is a dropout for a couple of minutes every 30 days when the prepaid plan expires/rolls over. Given that Xfinity isn't that reliable anyway, I can use the money I'm saving and invest in some sort of cheap cellular backup.
All in all, what did I learn?
I love MiniPCs now, incredible product. DAppnode is awesome, I'd participate in their validator rewards smoothing pool (which also supports them w/ 7% fees), but Rocketpool already has a default smoothing pool. Running a node is fun! Hopefully, Sonic.net deploys some of that 10Gb fiber in my area one day and I'll run nodes for Hopr & Waku/Status as well!