Looking for a Core Snapshot download

Hey guys, I'm trying to get my first Bitcoin Node up and running on an Azure VM with Linux. It's been syncing for a week now. Verification progress is sitting at around 0.53. Can anyone point me to a site or a torrent to grab a Core Snapshot?

You should read this topic for all the reasons not to do this. To speed up your sync: add enough RAM to your VM. Or better: don't use a VM. How much RAM does your VM have? If you can add at least 16 GB RAM and 12 GB dbcache, that should improve things.

Along with how many cores are do you have and what other settings are on the machine. Azure VM is a little vague when it comes to what you have in terms of performance. And remember, since it's in the Microsoft cloud, they have full access to your drive including any BTC you have stored on it. Make sure your wallet is encrypted. -Dave

Some website i know which create and share Bitcoin Core folder no longer online. But FYI, Bitcoin Core have UTXO snapshot feature which allows you to jump sync to certain block height. After you synced to latest block height, you can use most of your full node features while it download older blocks in background. 3 days ago, Jameson Lopp write a great article about it (with download link) on https://blog.lopp.net/bitcoin-node-sync-with-utxo-snapshots/.

What do you guys generally think about running nodes on Azure (or any cloud)? Don't you think it's bad? Am I the only one? I mean, why run a node on computer that doesn't belong to you? Obviously you control the software which is better than trusting a public node (someone else's node is a better term). But, at the same time, you don't control the infrastructure, nor the networking, nor the pc in general!

I wonder how casinos and exchanges do that. I don't think they own their own server infrastructure, which means they must rely on the cloud somewhere. It's a risk:

The thing is, not only they control the infrastructure, but there may be legal issues that arise. I mean, I guess nobody has a full, clear picture of the legislation around cloud-computer usage. Bitcoin is free software, of course, but running a bitcoin node on the cloud, essentially generates a computer that handles transactions etc. I suppose that in order to develop such an infrastructure you would need some legal knowledge / advice / support (??).

That's why most people choose cloud or remote server, especially if they need 99.9...% uptime.

However, if you still want to add a snapshot: - Shut down the node. - Make a copy of the blockchain to some other folder. - Transfer it to the other VM and start it up. You can also make multiple snapshots, but I don't recommend doing this unless you have ample money to pay for the storage costs. A cloud computing platform like AWS or Azure will make it easy for you to create a snapshot though, so in that case, you won't even have to copy stuff yourself - you can just shut down the node and start the process, letting the cloud platform handle the rest.

The Assumeutxo feature is very handy for people who don't have the best hardware but want to interact with the blockchain right away. I'm using an Azure VM and paying for each GB. I'd like to download a pruned node and interact with the blockchain without the high storage costs before pruning. I think a Raspberry Pi combined with the Assumeutxo feature could solve my problems. But why isn't there an official pruned version of the blockchain available?

That's an interesting point. Because I never thought about the legal aspects of using cloud services. But I think as long as you have your wallet encrypted, you're fine. The great thing about cloud VMs is the high availability of 99.99% and the scaling capabilities. I think that's why companies that run crypto wallets, for example, run their nodes on cloud solutions.

You don't need to store the entire blockchain before pruning, pruning happens during the download. So 20 GB is enough (but you'll still need to download a lot). Because it's far from recommended.

As reminder, that article also mention you can use assumeutxo while enabling pruned mode. In addition, you can enable pruned more before start sync. It's good choice, if you want to save few hours - days syncing using Azure VM. Although you also could copy Bitcoin Core folder from Raspberry Pi to your Azure VM. I would guess Bitcoin Core developer don't want people trust them so much.

If OP really wants a pruned snapshot (which he shouldn't), he can have mine. It contains blocks and chainstate (and for some reason blocks/index), and was created with bitcoin-28.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz. It was time to upgrade anyway, so I could take a snapshot. Download link: pruned.tar.gz (scheduled to be deleted in 28 days).