Should Block Producer Sync Prior to Configuring Relay?

I have my block producer machine up and running, but no relay yet. Therefore, in the topology file, I do not have a relay configured. gLiveView still shows a status of “starting” after 15 minutes of up time. If I run

sudo systemctl status cardano-node
or
journalctl --unit=cardano-node --follow

I don’t see any errors. So, does it have to be configured to a running relay before it can sync??

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Cardano uses a pull model i.e. the BP pulls the chain state and Tx from mempool from its configured relays. The relays pull the freshly minted blocks from the BP. If your BP has no relays configured, it cannot pull anything.

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It’s easiest to just start with one machine (optimally one of the Relays) and let it sync completely with the default topology. When it is finished you can clone the machine to have a fully synced DB on your clones. Then reconfigure one of the clones to be the BP and update typology accordingly.

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Awesome! Thanks @tomdx and @zwirny… exactly the info I was looking for.