Finally, it's getting quieter in "witness maintenance" land :-)
Since the memory increase in the steem blockchain, which broke my witness for almost a day, it's all good and stable now. Although i am using a 64GB RAM server from @privex, i had some setting left (from the original witness guide) which limited the actual witness container memory to 16GB, which led to the failure. A quick jump to the witnesses chat channel, and a few minutes later, it was fixed. No issues with that container since then, which contributes greatly on my breathing rythm :-)
Steemfeed-js issue
Last week, @someguy123 's great steemfeed-js was ongoing a memory compression upgrade, which led to all witnesses using it for automatic price feeds to stall . I noticed after a few hours that the prices didn't update anymore, took my jacket, went back on to the witnesses chat channel, and what do you know? Took 2 minutes this time, was so fast i didn't need to wear my jacket in the first place .
Future plans
I already run two dedicated servers ( one for witness and one for seed ), and my plan is, budget permitting, to run a third one, a backup-witness server. This is a server which is setup as a witness, and jumps in whenever the main witness server fails for any reason. I am waiting to rank to level 60-70 at least in order to build this one, so in the meantime, i check my witness server daily, sometimes a few times a day.
Thank you Jerry Banfield ( @jerrybanfield )
It's one of Jerry Banfield's videos that led me to Steemit the first time, and it's his enthusiasm in another video that led me into becoming a witness. In that video, Jerry promised to help young witnesses get on their feet, and what do you know, he did just that! Nearly two months after i built my witness, i got a vote from him for my witness. Besides his high voting power, he also serves as proxy for a lot of people, so his vote propulsed me the top 100 in the witness list, and i finally got to witness nearly two blocks daily.
While i thought at first this will last a few days, this lasted for over two months, and i would like to take the opportunity and thank him from the bottom of my heart for his help.
As if it wasn't enough, Jerry is still looking tiressly onto ways to keep helping young witnesses, and the proof is in his last incentive here https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jerrybanfield/100-steem-for-witnesses-below-rank-80 , where he sends 100 Steem to witness below the 100 rank, just to help them cope with server costs!
Seed node
I don't know if people are aware of the importance of running seed nodes for the Steemit network stability. Witnesses took upon themselves to run those nodes ( what is needed is a server with similar specs to a witness server ), but for some reason, not many do so, as you can see in @wackou 's list of steem seed nodes here . I built a seed node from day one ( also following @jerrybanfield 's advise ) , and this litte puppy is humming along doing his stuff so flawlessly i am a little afraid to forget it's login/password ...
Please vote windforce for Witness!
If you would like to help me cope with the costs for running the witness and seed servers and you have an available witness voting slot, please go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses page, roll down to the bottom of the list, type windforce in the box and click Vote.