tendermint/docs/deploy-testnets.rst

Deploy a Testnet
================

Now that we've seen how ABCI works, and even played with a few
applications on a single validator node, it's time to deploy a test
network to four validator nodes.

Manual Deployments
------------------

It's relatively easy to setup a Tendermint cluster manually. The only
requirements for a particular Tendermint node are a private key for the
validator, stored as ``priv_validator.json``, a node key, stored as
``node_key.json`` and a list of the public keys of all validators, stored as
``genesis.json``. These files should be stored in ``~/.tendermint/config``, or
wherever the ``$TMHOME`` variable might be set to.

Here are the steps to setting up a testnet manually:

1) Provision nodes on your cloud provider of choice
2) Install Tendermint and the application of interest on all nodes
3) Generate a private key and a node key for each validator using
   ``tendermint init``
4) Compile a list of public keys for each validator into a
   ``genesis.json`` file and replace the existing file with it.
5) Run ``tendermint node --proxy_app=kvstore --p2p.persistent_peers=< peer addresses >`` on each node,
   where ``< peer addresses >`` is a comma separated list of the IP:PORT
   combination for each node. The default port for Tendermint is
   ``46656``. Thus, if the IP addresses of your nodes were
   ``192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2, 192.168.0.3, 192.168.0.4``, the command
   would look like:

::

    tendermint node --proxy_app=kvstore --p2p.persistent_peers=96663a3dd0d7b9d17d4c8211b191af259621c693@192.168.0.1:46656, 429fcf25974313b95673f58d77eacdd434402665@192.168.0.2:46656, 0491d373a8e0fcf1023aaf18c51d6a1d0d4f31bd@192.168.0.3:46656, f9baeaa15fedf5e1ef7448dd60f46c01f1a9e9c4@192.168.0.4:46656

After a few seconds, all the nodes should connect to each other and start
making blocks! For more information, see the Tendermint Networks section
of `the guide to using Tendermint <using-tendermint.html>`__.

But wait! Steps 3 and 4 are quite manual. Instead, use `this script <https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint/blob/develop/docs/examples/init_testnet.sh>`__, which does the heavy lifting for you. And it gets better.

Instead of the previously linked script to initialize the files required for a testnet, we have the ``tendermint testnet`` command. By default, running ``tendermint testnet`` will create all the required files, just like the script. Of course, you'll still need to manually edit some fields in the ``config.toml``. Alternatively, see the available flags to auto-populate the ``config.toml`` with the fields that would otherwise be passed in via flags when running ``tendermint node``. As you might imagine, this command is useful for manual or automated deployments.

Automated Deployments
---------------------

The easiest and fastest way to get a testnet up in less than 5 minutes.

Local
^^^^^

With ``docker`` and ``docker-compose`` installed, run the command:

::

    make localnet-start

from the root of the tendermint repository. This will spin up a 4-node local testnet.

Cloud
^^^^^

See the `next section <./terraform-and-ansible.html>`__ for details.