Well our new witness server is up and running great and waiting for your vote. We processed our first block yesterday and look forward to many more. I thought I'd take this time to give you a rundown on the decisions, trials and tribulations that went into getting this project done.
It all started with some learning curve; I had to get up to speed with, what is this witness server thing? Fortunately there is a lot of documentation out there in the Steemasphere but it took a bit of threshing to separate the wheat from the chaff what with all the old information and new forks and whatnot. After getting the gist of things I finally I arrived at a couple of posts that looked like they could help me get started quickly.
With the software decisions under the belt it was time to select a server. I wanted the most hot rod I could get for the budget we had set aside. After much looking around and comparing prices from different vendors I found the dream dedicated server.
SOS Dedicated Servers
I chose this one from their menu. Follow the link and you will see all it's cool parameters. I made the buy and got access to our new server.
Next I had to choose an operating system. I went with Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS. It's always best to stay a couple of notches behind the latest bleeding edge OS release. Not all software is completely up to date with the latest OS release. That is also true for a Steem-it Witness Server.
OK so now I got started with securing the server. For newbies @krnel's guides are a great step-by-step towards accomplishing this task.
With hardening of the server complete; here are our specs:
Root and Root User logins have individual public/private keys
Passwords have been disabled
Root login has been disabled
Custom SSH port
Heavy duty firewall
Fail2Ban monitoring
(Keeping track of your private keys is paramount here.)
On to the witness install. @someguy123's guide proved to be a great resource for this process. Just remember to load the latest blocks from https://gtg.steem.house/get/blockchain/block_log.
Super everything went relatively smooth and for the few bumps I ran into I want to thank @ayogom and @drakos on steem.chat for helping me over the humps.
Well we are moving up the witness list and the server is humming along. Please consider voting for our newborn witness by clicking on the green thumbs up on the https://steemian.info/witnesses list.