Operations on Solo

Managing Your Network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This guide covers day-to-day management operations for a running Solo network, including starting, stopping, and restarting nodes, capturing logs, and troubleshooting.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have completed the following:

System Readiness - your local environment meets all hardware and software requirements.
Quickstart - you have a running Solo network deployed using solo one-shot single deploy.

Note: If you need to upgrade an existing Solo network, see Upgrade Your Network.

Using Network Load Generator with Solo

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Using Network Load Generator with Solo

The Network Load Generator (NLG) is a benchmarking tool that stress tests Hiero networks by generating configurable transaction loads. Use it to validate the performance and stability of your Solo network before deploying to production or running integration tests.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have completed the following:

System Readiness — your local environment meets all hardware and software requirements.
Quickstart — you have a running Solo network and are familiar with the basic Solo workflow.

Step 1: Start a Load Test

Use the rapid-fire load start command to install the NLG Helm chart and begin a load test against your deployment.

Dynamically add, update, and remove Consensus Nodes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This guide covers how to dynamically manage consensus nodes in a running Solo network - adding new nodes, updating existing ones, and removing nodes that are no longer needed. All three operations can be performed without taking the network offline.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have:

A running Solo network. If you don’t have one, deploy using one of the following methods:
1. Quickstart - single command deployment using solo one-shot single deploy.
2. Manual Deployment - step-by-step deployment with full control over each component.
Set the required environment variables as described below:

Upgrade Your Network

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This guide explains how to upgrade an existing local Solo network deployment to a newer Hiero version. It is intended for networks that were already deployed with solo one-shot single deploy.

Note: If you just completed Quickstart with the latest Solo release, you do not need to upgrade unless you are intentionally moving an older deployment to a newer version.

Prerequisites

Before upgrading, ensure you have completed the following:

Cleanup

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

This guide covers how to tear down a Solo network deployment, understand resource usage, and perform a full reset when needed.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure you have completed the following:

Quickstart — you have a running Solo network deployed using solo one-shot single deploy.

Destroying Your Network

Important: Always destroy your network before deploying a new one to avoid conflicts and errors.

To remove your Solo network:

Solo Image Cache

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

A Solo network runs roughly 29 container images (consensus node, mirror node, JSON-RPC relay, Explorer, MinIO, and supporting services). The image cache pre-pulls those images and stores them as local .tar archives, so repeat deployments load them from disk instead of re-downloading them from their registries.

Solo populates and uses the cache automatically in two places:

At install time - Homebrew and npm installs pre-pull the default images.
During solo one-shot deploys - Solo pulls and loads the cached images as pipeline phases before the network is deployed.

You can also manage the cache directly with the solo cache image commands.