Operational and Hardware Requirements for Orchestrators

Minimum, recommended, and production hardware for running a Livepeer orchestrator.

Orchestrators run video transcoding (NVENC/FFmpeg) and/or AI inference on GPUs. Hardware directly affects job selection, reputation, and revenue. Below are minimum, recommended, and AI-optimised guidelines for 2026.

Minimum (development / testing)

Suitable for testnet, low-volume workloads, and learning.

Recommended (video / production)

Optimised for real-time streaming and multi-resolution transcoding.

AI inference

AI workloads are VRAM-bound. Stake does not determine AI job routing; capability and price do.

Also ensure: CUDA 12+, NVIDIA Container Toolkit, good cooling, high IOPS storage for model weights.

Network and ops

• Latency: <50 ms to major regions helps streaming and gateway selection.
• Production: Static IP, reverse proxy (e.g. Nginx), TLS, firewall rules.
• Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, NVIDIA DCGM exporter; track GPU utilisation, VRAM, segment/job success rate.

Checklist before going live

• GPU visible via nvidia-smi
• Docker sees GPU (--gpus all)
• CUDA functional
• Ports open (e.g. 8935)
• Stable Arbitrum RPC
• Monitoring configured

See also

Install go-livepeer

Orchestrator stats & monitoring

Data centre setup