Manage Orderer Nodes

This topic contains information about ordering service nodes (OSNs), including how to view and edit OSNs, how to view the health information for an OSN, and how to add an additional OSN.

View and Edit the Orderer Node Configuration

An orderer node’s configuration determines how the node performs and behaves on the network.

Only administrators can change a node’s configuration. If you've got user permissions, then you can view a node’s configuration settings. See Orderer Node Attributes.

1. Go to the console and select the Nodes tab.
2. In the Nodes tab, go to the Nodes table, locate the orderer node that you want configuration information for, and click the node’s More Actions button.
3. The configuration option is determined by your permissions. If you're an administrator, locate and click Edit Configuration. If you're a user, locate and click View.
   The Configure dialog is displayed.
4. If you're an administrator, then modify the node’s settings as needed.
5. Click Submit to save the configuration changes, or click X to close the Configure dialog.
6. Restart the node to apply any changes that you made.

View Health Information for an Orderer Node

You can check an orderer node’s metrics to see how the node is performing on the blockchain network. This information helps you discover and diagnose performance problems.

The Health pane displays these performance metrics: CPU utilization and memory utilization.

1. Go to the console and select the Nodes tab.
2. In the Nodes tab, click the name of the orderer node you want to see health information for.
   The Node Information page is displayed.
3. Click the Health pane to view the node’s performance metrics.
   If the utilization percentages are consistently high, then contact Oracle Support. If the Disk Utilization percentage is too high, then the ledger might not get stored on the node properly.

Add an Orderer Node

Founder instances are provisioned with 3 OSNs, all of which are active after instance creation. Additional OSNs can be scaled out as described in Scale Your Instance. These OSNs will not be started automatically. You must start them and export the updated network configuration block to the partipant instances as described in Join the Participant or Scaled-Out OSNs to the Founder's Ordering Service.

Participant instances are created with 3 OSNs, but none of these OSNs are joined to the network or started when the instance is provisioned. You must follow the instructions in Join the Participant or Scaled-Out OSNs to the Founder's Ordering Service in order to join them to the network and start the nodes. If you want to scale out the participant OSNs these steps must be repeated.