Deploy Zebra nodes on fixed IP addresses

[teor2345]

Motivation

To test Zebra on testnet and mainnet, we should deploy Zebra nodes on fixed IP addresses.

This tests that Zebra is a full participant in the Zcash network.

API Reference

https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/compute/instance-templates/create-with-container
https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/compute/instance-groups/managed/create

listen_addr: SocketAddr

The address on which this node should listen for connections.

Can be address:port or just address. If there is no configured port, Zebra will use the default port for the configured network. address can be an IP address or a DNS name. DNS names are only resolved once, when Zebra starts up.

If a specific listener address is configured, Zebra will advertise it to other nodes. But by default, Zebra uses an unspecified address (“0.0.0.0” or “[::]”), which is not advertised to other nodes.

Zebra does not currently support:

• Advertising a different external IP address Zebra should support separate local bind and external advertise addresses #1890, or
• Auto-discovering its own external IP address Zebra should auto-discover its own external IP address #1893.

However, other Zebra instances compensate for unspecified or incorrect listener addresses by adding the external IP addresses of peers to their address books.

https://doc.zebra.zfnd.org/zebra_network/struct.Config.html#structfield.listen_addr

Solution

• Configure all deployed Zebra nodes with the Google Cloud external IP address
• Allow inbound connections to ports 8233 and 18233
• Deploy a mainnet and testnet Zebra node on fixed IP addresses, every time a release is tagged (using an action)

Optional:

• Deploy a mainnet and testnet Zebra node on fixed IP addresses, every time the main branch is updated

Alternatives

Individual developers run their own nodes, but that's not as reliable as auto-deployment.

If the IP address changes frequently, nodes don't get included in DNS seeders.

[dconnolly]

Not strictly needed for release candidate, but we should discuss if we need to solve this before recommending it to users. // @mpguerra @ftm1000 @gustavovalverde

[teor2345]

We opened this because we thought it might be causing the DNS seeder issues, but that doesn't seem likely right now.