Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud computing division of Amazon, the world's largest cloud provider by revenue. Within the Solana ecosystem, AWS plays a foundational infrastructure role: a significant share of Solana validators, RPC endpoints, and enterprise-grade Web3 applications run on AWS data centers. AWS has formalised its Solana commitment through purpose-built deployment tooling, dedicated engineering blog posts, and hardware guidance targeting Solana's demanding compute and networking requirements.

AWS Blockchain Node Runners

The clearest signal of AWS's Solana investment is its open-source AWS Blockchain Node Runners initiative, a collection of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) blueprints built with the AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK). The Solana blueprint was the second protocol supported after Ethereum, and was announced publicly at Solana Breakpoint 2023 — reflecting how seriously AWS treats Solana as an enterprise deployment target.

The Solana blueprint supports all three node configurations the network uses:

• Consensus nodes (validators) — voting nodes that participate in proof-of-stake consensus, deployable on mainnet and testnet.
• Base RPC nodes — non-voting nodes that serve most JSON RPC API calls but exclude account-scanning operations, suitable for most dApps.
• Extended RPC nodes — full-featured RPC nodes with secondary indexes enabled, supporting every JSON RPC method; these require 512 GB to 1 TB of RAM.

Both single-node and highly available (HA) topologies are supported out of the box. The HA configuration uses Auto Scaling groups behind an Application Load Balancer, giving operators resilience without custom orchestration. Six protocol blueprints ship in the repository: Ethereum, Solana (covering both the Agave and Frankendancer clients), Base, BNB Chain, Bitcoin, and a reference "Dummy" blueprint.

Supported Client Implementations

AWS documentation explicitly covers both major Solana validator client implementations:

• Agave (the mainline client now maintained by Anza) is the primary reference implementation in AWS guides. With the Agave v2.x release, the minimum recommended CPU clock speed rose from 2.8 GHz to 3.2 GHz, a shift that AWS engineers documented alongside updated instance guidance.
• Frankendancer (Jump Crypto's hybrid client combining Firedancer's networking stack with Agave's runtime) is listed as a supported target in the Blockchain Node Runners repository. As of late 2025, roughly 20% of staked SOL runs Frankendancer validators.

Recommended EC2 Instances

AWS publishes specific hardware recommendations for each node type. For AMD EPYC-based deployments — the configuration the Solana community generally prefers for its CPU clock speed characteristics — AWS recommends:

• r7a.16xlarge (512 GiB memory) for base RPC workloads, paired with EBS volumes up to 2 TiB.
• r7a.24xlarge (768 GiB memory) for extended RPC nodes requiring secondary indexes.

AWS also maintains documented support for building Solana validator binaries on ARM-based EC2 instances powered by AWS Graviton4, offering operators a second hardware path. The Graviton4 route can reduce per-core costs compared to x86, though benchmark comparisons depend on specific workloads and Agave build flags.

Operational Services

Beyond raw compute, Solana operators running on AWS can integrate several AWS-native services:

• Amazon CloudWatch — monitoring and alerting for node health metrics, slot lag, and system resource utilisation.
• AWS Secrets Manager — secure storage and rotation of validator identity keys and vote account keypairs.
• Application Load Balancer — distributes inbound JSON RPC traffic across a pool of RPC nodes in HA deployments.
• Amazon EBS — block storage for accounts, ledger, and snapshot data with configurable IOPS, critical for keeping up with Solana's write-heavy account state.

The default blueprint configuration keeps the JSON RPC API non-public-facing at the network layer, routing external requests through the load balancer rather than exposing node ports directly to the internet.

Cost Profile and Bandwidth Considerations

Running Solana nodes on AWS carries a specific cost challenge operators must plan for. Solana's Turbine data propagation protocol causes nodes to generate between 100 TiB and 200 TiB of outbound data traffic per month, even for RPC-only nodes. AWS charges $0.09 per GB of outbound internet traffic after the first 100 GB free tier, which at 100 TiB translates to roughly $9,000 in egress fees alone.

AWS engineers published a traffic-shaping guide addressing this directly. By using systemd services and nftables rules to cap outbound bandwidth dynamically based on node sync status, operators can reduce effective outbound traffic to as low as 20 MiBps (approximately 6.5 TiB per month) without breaking sync, cutting estimated data transfer costs by over 85%. The recommended operating range for performance-to-cost balance is 40–50 MiBps sustained.

This egress cost structure makes AWS less competitive than bare-metal providers for high-volume validator operators, but AWS remains widely used for RPC nodes, enterprise dApp backends, and organisations that value the AWS compliance posture (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP) for regulated and institutional deployments.

Managed Blockchain and Solana

AWS's Amazon Managed Blockchain (AMB) service — which provides fully managed node access and query APIs for multiple networks — does not currently include Solana. AMB supports Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polygon, and Hyperledger Fabric. Solana deployments on AWS are therefore self-managed, using the Blockchain Node Runners blueprints, EC2 directly, or third-party node providers listed on the AWS Marketplace.

Enterprise and Web3 Context

AWS's engagement with Solana sits within its broader Web3 infrastructure push. The company operates a dedicated AWS Web3 blog where engineering teams publish deployment architecture, performance tuning, and cost optimisation guides specific to blockchain protocols. Solana is one of the most-documented protocols on that blog, reflecting both the difficulty of operating Solana infrastructure and the enterprise demand AWS sees for it.

The Solana Foundation publicly endorsed the Blockchain Node Runners announcement at Breakpoint 2023, noting that "the expertise needed to run a node has dropped significantly, making it easier than ever to deploy on Solana." This framing positions AWS's tooling as a decentralisation enabler — lowering the barrier for traditional finance firms, fintechs, and Web3 projects to run their own nodes rather than relying solely on third-party RPC providers.

Ecosystem Fit

AWS is not a Solana protocol, staking product, or DeFi application — it is the underlying infrastructure layer on which much of the Solana ecosystem runs. Its relevance to Solana Compass users is practical: operators choosing a hosting provider, projects evaluating RPC infrastructure, and enterprises assessing compliance-friendly Solana deployment paths will all encounter AWS as the default starting point. The combination of official deployment blueprints, client-specific performance guides, native AWS service integrations, and the scale and geographic reach of the AWS global network makes it the most fully documented cloud path for Solana node operations, even as bare-metal and specialised blockchain hosting providers often offer better per-byte economics for validator-heavy workloads.