View System Information

The Walrus system object contains metadata about available and used storage and the price of storage per KiB in FROST. These values are determined by 2/3 agreement between storage nodes for each storage epoch. You can pay to purchase storage space for specified durations. These space resources can be split, merged, and transferred, and can later be used to place a blob ID into Walrus.

Each Walrus storage epoch is represented by the Walrus system object, which contains a storage committee and various metadata about storage nodes, including the mapping between shards and storage nodes, available space, and current costs. Committee changes between epochs are managed by a set of staking contracts that implement a full delegated proof-of-stake system based on the WAL token.

How to view system information with walrus info

You can view information about the Walrus system through the walrus info command. It provides an overview of current system parameters, such as the current epoch, the number of storage nodes and shards in the system, the maximum blob size, and the current cost in WAL for storing blobs:

$ walrus info

The console responds:

Walrus system information

Epochs and storage duration
Current epoch: 1
Start time: 2025-03-25 15:00:24.408 UTC
End time: 2025-04-08 15:00:24.408 UTC
Epoch duration: 14days
Blobs can be stored for at most 53 epochs in the future.

Storage nodes
Number of storage nodes: 103
Number of shards: 1000

Blob size
Maximum blob size: 13.6 GiB (14,599,533,452 B)
Storage unit: 1.00 MiB

Storage prices per epoch
(Conversion rate: 1 WAL = 1,000,000,000 FROST)
Price per encoded storage unit: 0.0001 WAL
Additional price for each write: 20,000 FROST

...

The ... line marks where this example omits the rest of the output. To print all information, run walrus info all.

You can view additional information with various subcommands. Run each subcommand as walrus info <SUBCOMMAND>, for example walrus info epoch:

Command	Description
all	Print all information listed below
epoch	Print epoch information
storage	Print storage information
size	Print size information
price	Print price information
bft	Print byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) information
committee	Print committee information
help	Print help for the given subcommand

Parameter	Required/Optional	Description
--config <CONFIG>	Optional	Path to the Walrus configuration file. Defaults to client_config.yaml / client_config.yml in the current directory, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/walrus/, ~/.config/walrus/, or ~/.walrus/
--rpc-url <RPC_URL>	Optional	URL of the Sui RPC node. Defaults to rpc_url in client config or wallet config
--context <CONTEXT>	Optional	Configuration context to use; defaults to default_context
--wallet <WALLET>	Optional	Path to the Sui wallet configuration file. Defaults through config parameter, Walrus config path, ./sui_config.yaml, then ~/.sui/sui_config/client.yaml
--gas-budget <GAS_BUDGET>	Optional	Gas budget for transactions. Estimated automatically if not specified
--json	Optional	Write output as JSON
--trace-cli <TRACE_CLI>	Optional	Enable tracing output. Values: otlp (sends to OTLP collector) or file=path (writes gzipped JSON traces to file)
-h, --help	Optional	Print help

How to check storage node health with walrus health

You can check the health of storage nodes with the walrus health command. This command accepts different options to select which nodes to check. You must provide exactly one of the node-selection options: --node-ids, --node-urls, --committee, or --active-set.

Parameter	Required or optional	Description
--node-ids <NODE_IDS>...	Required (choose one)	The IDs of the storage nodes to be selected
--node-urls <NODE_URLS>...	Required (choose one)	The URLs of the storage nodes to be selected
--committee	Required (choose one)	Select all storage nodes in the current committee
--active-set	Required (choose one)	Select all storage nodes in the active set
--config <CONFIG>	Optional	Path to the Walrus configuration file. Defaults to client_config.yaml or client_config.yml in the current directory, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/walrus/, ~/.config/walrus/, or ~/.walrus/
--rpc-url <RPC_URL>	Optional	URL of the Sui RPC node. Defaults to rpc_url in client config or wallet config
--context <CONTEXT>	Optional	Configuration context to use; defaults to default_context
--wallet <WALLET>	Optional	Path to the Sui wallet configuration file. Defaults through config parameter, Walrus config path, ./sui_config.yaml, then ~/.sui/sui_config/client.yaml
--gas-budget <GAS_BUDGET>	Optional	Gas budget for transactions. Estimated automatically if not specified
--json	Optional	Write output as JSON
--detail	Optional	Print detailed health information
--sort-by <SORT_BY>	Optional	Field to sort by. Possible values: status, id, name, url
--desc	Optional	Sort in descending order
--concurrent-requests <CONCURRENT_REQUESTS>	Optional	Number of concurrent requests to send to storage nodes. Default: 60
--trace-cli <TRACE_CLI>	Optional	Enable tracing output. Values: otlp (sends to OTLP collector) or file=path (writes gzipped JSON traces to file)
-h, --help	Optional	Print help

Read the walrus health output

With --detail, walrus health reports the following for each node:

• Uptime
• Current epoch
• Node status, for example Active or RecoveryInProgress
• Event progress: events persisted, events pending, and highest finished event index
• Checkpoint downloading progress: latest checkpoint sequence number and estimated lag
• Shard summary: owned shards and read-only shards
• Owned shard status: counts of Ready, In transfer, In recovery, and Unknown shards

A healthy node reports the Active status and the current epoch. A node with any other status responds to health checks but is not fully operational. If a node is unreachable, the command returns an error. Without --json, the error shows the cause, for example a connection timeout, a DNS failure, or a refused connection. The --json output shows only a generic error message.