This Steem experience is going great, I must say!
I confess I haven't dedicated much time to the witness lately. Been busy with work. But it will be a work in progress... Thank you @timcliff for the mention at your Reports from the Witnesses (great initiative).
Clear up my intentions!
My witness should not be interpreted as "will always work" kind of witness. I am here to explore it, understand what else I can contribute with, and if along the way I can provide some support to the network, better! This, of course, does not mean it will never change in the future. I can become a fully redundant and 99.98% uptime node in the future, but first I thought I should learn my way in and also see if that is something I can support. I am also not alone in this venture, in terms of resources. So it might become a better scenario in the near future. I can't also promise regular updates since it depends on the time I find free to explore new stuff. For me, to post updates based on "no news" is somehow useless to the community (in my view). I will do my best to keep the node up since I am usually around hundreds of other computers 24/7, so it should not be difficult to look for one more (plus I am not the only one taking care of it) and to update everyone on the status of any upgrades or discoveries.
That said, back to my first update.
Updating current status
Looking quite stable the Docker solution... not sure about the performance metrics, but for me, it looks normal. Memory consumption is increasing rapidly, so if this continues at this pace, soon, I will need to upgrade. My uptime is now 6 days! It was already up and running before the HF19, but due to a power outage, the server rebooted and I had to replay the index.
What changed in my witness since last time?
- Updated the sdb_exchange_rate, but I need to set this somehow automatic. Investigating...
Other updates/developments/findings
- My NAS on which I did the first experiment is RIP... or lets rather say, I declared him DEAD! Why? I decided to do a server cleanup (dust is a problem every year or so), and because this one had an uptime for more than 150 days, the poor HDD power plugs, made of some kind of really poor plastic from a company I will not name, decided to change size during the cleanup day and fused the 12V rail once I tried to power it on. White smoke everywhere and melted plastic smell. Family complaining, and still no clue if the RAID is lost. Parts are already ordered and as a result, an upgrade is incoming! =) Later more about it...
- Since I am also a miner (for leisure, not for REAL profit) I am thinking about exploring solutions for people that mine, to also hold other services (like a witness node) on it. It pays the bills and you provide some help to the network. This includes not only PoW miners, but also PoS ones and Storage based ones.
TODO
- Bring a UPS to support some of the elements during a power outage (fibre modem, routers and workstation).
- Try to understand how to monitor the status of the witness and if there is something to view logs in a nicer way.
- Get into steemit.chat and try to chase some people to get me some answers.
That's all folks!
Produce quality SteemCATAPOOM and VOTE for Witnesses!