So I've been digging for a while, read the white paper, done my homework and no matter how many times I've seen the question asked I've never seen much of a straight answer when it comes to node specs.
I've seen vague posts about how people hoped their Intel i7 or AMD setup would be would be sufficient but people posted very few specs other than basic info about their processor type and that they hoped it would be enough. I've read posts about people hosting 40 core VPS cloud servers, and even a gentleman who wanted to build a rig using 30 Raspberry Pi 3's.
To the best of my knowledge with the research I have done here's what I know so far :
- An Ubuntu Linux Distro is the preferred OS.
-- (there is no Windows hosting software as of yet unless you run a Linux VM in Windows) - The software is CPU only based and there is no GPU support as of yet.
-- (this confused me a bit as CPU's are well known to be terrible with OpenCL vs a GPU.) - Nodes wait in a set cue before they are allowed to submit their POW contribution.
-- (POW must be submitted in the brief time allotted or the node concedes its spot and is placed back in cue) - POW must be submitted quickly, accurately, and with a unique ID
-- (Using the same ID twice is viewed as an attempt to soft fork) - Nodes with duplicate ID's that submit work are highly penalized if and when they are discovered.
-- (Duplicate node ID's are subject to total asset forfeiture and concede their shares to the discovering party) - When submitting POW, speed of submission is paramount.
-- (This helps to ensure a low latency network with very high speed blockchain confirmations.) - Almost all mining of STEEM was done prior to launch
-- (This pre-mining was used to generate the capitol needed to keep the platform funded prior to launch)
Those were a majority of the key points I was able to gather but so far I have been at a loss when it comes to actual system specs being used by the people who have been running nodes long term. Why no one will post their actual rig specs is a bit mind boggling to me because most people are proud to show off their specs. My assumption was that most are using easy to scale cloud hosting services but no one has seemed to confirm this is the method preferred by the majority of long standing hosts.
If anyone out there who has run a long term seed node, witness, or miner could help me put this final piece together I would be much appreciated. I have plenty of bandwidth at my disposal but am at a bit of a loss as to the hardware specs people prefer. The lack of GPU support would seem to imply that people are either running several multi core CPU's or cloud based hosting due to the inefficient nature of CPU's and absence of pools.
The white paper touched on why this was so but as of yet I have not been able to get a straight answer from any confirmed hosts or my research. I'm posting this in the hope that someone in the community could help me out with their actual node specs, or at least point me in the right direction so I can further research what is necessary to run a successful node to participate in the project.
Thank you in advance for any assistance provided. It would be very much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Alifton