Run Your Own Mirror Node with Google Cloud Storage (GCS)

Prerequisites

• A Google Cloud Platform account.

• Basic understanding of Hedera Mirror Nodes.

• Docker (>= v20.10.x) installed and opened on your machine. Run docker -v in your terminal to check the version you have installed.

• Java (openjdk@17: Java version 17), Gradle (the latest version), and PostgreSQL (the latest version) are installed on your machine.

1. Obtain Google Cloud Platform Requester Pay Information

In this step, you will generate your Google Cloud Platform HMAC access keys. These keys are needed to authenticate requests between your machine and Google Cloud Storage. They are similar to a username and password. Follow these steps to retrieve your access key, secret, and project ID:

• Create a new project and link your billing account.

• From the left navigation bar, select Cloud Storage > Settings.

• Click the Interoperability tab and scroll down to the User account HMAC section.

• If you don't already have a default project set, set it now.

• Click create keys to generate access keys for your account.

• You should see the access key and secret columns populate on the access keys table.

• You will use these keys to configure the application.yml file in a later step.

2. Clone Hedera Mirror Node Repository

• Open your terminal and run the following commands to clone the hedera-mirror-node repository then cd into the hedera-mirror-node folder:

git clone https://github.com/hashgraph/hedera-mirror-node
cd hedera-mirror-node

3. Configure Mirror Node

The application.yml file is the main configuration file for the Hedera Mirror Node. We'll update that file with your GCP keys and the Hedera Network you want to mirror.

• Open the application.yml file in the root directory with a text editor of your choice.

• Find the following section and replace the placeholders with your actual GCP access key, secret key, project ID, and the network you want to mirror:

Item	Description
accessKey	Your access key from your GCP account
cloudProvider	GCP
secretKey	Your secret key from your GCP account
gcpProjectId	Your GCP project ID
network	Enter the network you would to run your mirror node for

application.yml

hedera:
  mirror:
    importer: 
      downloader:
        accessKey: ENTER ACCESS KEY HERE
        cloudProvider: "GCP"
        secretKey: ENTER SECRET KEY HERE
        gcpProjectId: ENTER GCP PROJECT ID HERE
      network: PREVIEWNET/TESTNET/MAINNET #Pick one network

• Save the changes and close the file.

4. Start Your Hedera Mirror Node

Now let's start the Hedera Mirror Node using Docker. Docker allows you to easily run applications in a self-contained environment called a container.

• From the hedera-mirror-node directory, run the following command:

docker compose up -d db && docker logs hedera-mirror-node-db-1 --follow

5. Access Your Hedera Mirror Node Data

This step shows you how to access the data that your Hedera Mirror Node is collecting. The mirror node stores its data in a PostgreSQL database, and you're using Docker to connect to that database. To access the mirror node data, we'll have to enter the hedera-mirror-node-db-1 container.

• Open a new terminal and run the following command to view the list of containers:

docker ps

• Enter the following command to access the Docker container:

docker exec -it hedera-mirror-node-db-1 bash

• Enter the following command to access the database:

psql "dbname=mirror_node host=localhost user=mirror_node password=mirror_node_pass port=5432"

• Enter the following command to view the complete list of database tables:

\dt

• To exit the psql console, run the quit command:

\q

• Lastly, run the following command to stop and remove the created containers:

docker compose down

Congratulations! You have successfully run and deployed a Hedera Mirror Node with Google Cloud Storage (GCS) 🚀